I 


E  REWARDS 
OF  TASTE 

NORMAN  BRIDGE 


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The  Rewards  of  Taste 


By  the  Same  Author: 

The  Penalties  of  Taste 
and  Other  Essays 

i2mo,  cloth,  $1.50 


The  essay  which  gives  the  title  to  this 
exceedingly  readable  little  volume  is  fol- 
lowed by  five  others,  respectively  entitled; 
"Two  Kinds  of  Conscience,"  "Bashful- 
ness,"  "The  Nerves  of  the  Modern  Child," 
"Some  Lessons  of  Heredity,"  and  "Our 
Poorly  Educated  Educators." 

Dr.  Bridge  is  a  physician  of  wide  prac- 
tical observation  and  experience,  and  his 
treatment  of  these  themes  is  of  the  most 
catholic  kind.  His  plan  is  generous  and 
kind,  and  his  style  is  simple,  direct,  agree- 
able— even  chatty.  The  reader  can  give  a 
fair  guess  at  the  scope  and  significance  of 
the  treatment  from  the  very  names  of  the 
essays.  The  two  that  seem  to  us  to  pos- 
sess especial  value  are  "The  Nerves  of  the 
Modern  Child,"  and  "Some  Lessons  of 
Heredity."  These  are  of  prime  impor- 
tance and  are  treated  in  a  rather  striking 
way.  A  layman  might  have  written  the 
others,  but  not  these.  On  the  whole,  it 
can  be  truthfully  and  cheerfully  said  ot 
this  volume  that  it  is  thoughtful,  full  of 
suggestions,  and  worthy  of  a  wide  read- 
ing. — Los  A  ngeles  Herald. 


PUBLISHED  BY 

HERBERT  S.  STONE  AND  COMPANY 
CHICAGO 


The 

Rewards  of  Taste 

AND  OTHER  ESSAYS 


BY 


NORMAN    BRIDGE,  M.D. 


HERBERT  S.  STONE  df  COMPANY 

CHICAGO  AND  NEW  YORK 

MCMII 


COPYRIGHT,    1902,    BY 
HERBERT    S.     STONE     &     CO 


CONTENTS 

PAGB 

Some  Tangents  of  the  Ego         .        .        .        .  i 

The  Mind  for  a  Remedy         .        .        .        .  51 

The  Etiology  of  Lying 87 

Man  as  an  Air-Eating  Animal        .        .        .  123 

The  Rewards  of  Taste i45 

The  Psychology  OF  THE  Corset     .        .        .  i75 
The  Physical  Basis  OF  ExPERTNESs    .        .        .211 

The  Discordant  Children     .        .        .        .  237 


Some  Tangents  of  the  Ego 


Some  Tangents  of  the  Ego 


I 

The  study  of  the  genus  homo  is  a  pursuit 
of  endless  interest.  The  anatomy  and  phys- 
iology of  man,  and  the  diseases  that  infest 
his  body,  have  been  investigated  with  amaz- 
ing success  in  recent  decades.  The  moral 
and  emotional — the  intellectual  side  of 
human  nature,  has  been  a  subject  of  wonder 
and  study  through  all  history.  Why  and 
how  do  people  think  and  act  so  variously  as 
they  do?  What  is  the  basis  of  their  varying 
equations  in  society?  Essays  and  sermons, 
and  stories  without  number,  have  been  writ- 
ten to  answer  these  questions,  yet  the  sub- 
ject is  not  exhausted,  and  never  can  be. 

The  general  tendencies  of  human  kind,  and 
much  of  the  philosophy  of  life,  were  well 
told  some  centuries  ago.  But  new  problems 
arise,  and  new  data  are  constantly  being 
found.     The  psychology  of  to-day  is  based 

I 


SOME  TANGENTS  OF  THE  EGO 

on  physiology,  and  has  made  the  character 
of  mind  more  plain  and  rational.  Moreover, 
on  every  fresh  discovery  of  a  cardinal  fact 
in  science,  there  must  be  more  or  less  of  a 
recasting  of  the  theory  of  the  branch  to 
which  it  belongs.  Then  in  a  measure  it 
becomes  a  new  science. 

One  of  the  greatest  ambitions  of  the  study 
of  man  is  to  be  able  to  understand  and  pre- 
dict his  conduct  under  given  circumstances; 
and  it  is  our  confusion  in  trying  to  explain 
it  that  makes  the  study  interminable.  If  we 
were  all  alike  in  emotions  and  motives,  or  if 
we  were  any  of  us  constantly  the  same  in 
these  particulars,  the  question  would  be  an 
easier  one.  But  we  differ,  like  the  trees, 
and  vary  from  time  to  time;  we  know  our- 
selves too  little,  and  others  far  less,  and  for- 
ever wonder  why  others  act  as  they  do.  In 
trying  to  say  why,  we  tell  stories  and  guess 
mostly — we  observe  carelessly,  and  analyze 
and  reason  very  little.  We  usually  miscon- 
strue in  another  qualities  that  we  ourselves 
lack;  and  often  when  we  try  to  understand, 
we  attribute  acts  to  some  impossible  motive 
that  we  fancy  the  other  must  have. 

There  are  some  truths  that  are  known  of 
everybody,  and  so  are  common  axioms. 
They  are  verified  by  the  universal  experience 

2 


SOME   TANGENTS  OF  THE  EGO 

of  the  race.  Certain  necessary  things  man- 
kind must  forever  do  and  think,  and  for 
these  we  calculate.  It  is  the  unusual,  the 
erratic,  the  unsymmetrical,  that  disturb  our 
reckoning  and  make  confusion. 

The  struggle  for  existence  among  all  liv- 
ing things  must  go  on.  It  has  probably 
always  been  going  on,  and  we  need  not  look 
to  see  it  stop.  With  the  human  family  the 
struggle  is  not  always  for  the  same  thing, 
but  it  is  always  for  something;  for  property, 
shelter,  warmth;  for  personal  likes,  and  for 
manifold  real  and  imagined  joys;  for  phys- 
ical existence  against  the  enemies  of  the 
body.  Each  class  and  cult  has  ambitions 
somewhat  different  from  every  other,  but 
they  are  alike  in  seeking  the  things  desirable 
for  the  exigent  needs  of  self. 

Selfishness  is  necessary  for  the  struggle, 
and  furnishes  its  motive  power.  And  it 
makes  vulgar  cattle  of  us  too  often  for  the 
comfort  of  the  thoughtful.  More  or  less  we 
prosper  by  the  misfortunes  of  others,  and 
are  glad  of  the  misfortunes;  and  we  try  to 
excuse  ourselves  for  being  glad.  We  push 
others  out  of  the  easy  paths  if  we  can,  and 
only  once  in  a  while,  when  the  awfulness  of 
the  struggle  is  apparent,  feel   ashamed  of  it. 

We  are  separate  and  different,  yet  more 

3 


SOME  TANGENTS  OF  THE  EGO 

or  less  connected,  units,  and  we  bowl  on 
through  the  journey  of  life,  struggling  to 
keep  up  with  the  great  procession,  and  hold 
favored  places  in  it.  In  our  evolutions  we 
are  bound  to  make  detours  and  go  off  at 
tangents,  sometimes  great  and  prolonged 
ones,  and  often  without  knowing  that  we 
are  out  of  our  usual  grooves.  We  make  some 
of  these  detours  purposely,  but  most  of  them 
are  really  blunders,  which  we  would  avoid  if 
we  could.  The  intention  is  to  keep  rather 
closely  to  the  beaten  path.  Sometimes  we 
push  out  to  one  side  a  little,  and  pretend 
that  we  are  pursuing  an  independent  or  ex- 
perimental course,  but  the  moment  we  find 
that  we  really  are,  most  of  us  feel  timid  or 
shocked  about  it,  begin  to  make  excuses, 
and  rush  back  near  the  main  road. 

We  are  usually  blind  to  the  fact  that  we 
are  out  of  the  regular  course,  and  this  is  one 
of  the  greatest  of  our  misfortunes.  Others, 
for  some  reason,  perhaps  for  fear  of  being 
misunderstood,  hesitate  to  tell  us;  if  they 
do  tell  us,  we  are  in  doubt  whether  they  are 
sincere,  or  mean  to  hurt  us.  So  the  fates 
that  always  ought  to  help  us,  seem  to  pre- 
vent us  from  being  helped  much.  We  must 
seek  the  road  alone,  and,  if  we  can,  fall  into 
the  regular  step  of  the  caravan  v/ithout  the 

4 


SOME  TANGENTS  OF  THE  EGO 

aid  of  others.  This  is  the  course  of  real 
independence  that  we  have  to  pursue.  In 
the  momentous  marches  of  our  lives  we  walk 
alone;  we  may  take  counsel  of  others,  but 
must  follow  our  own  advice. 

Our  egoistic  ideas  are  necessarily  the 
strongest  we  have.  Altruistic  impulses  are 
kept  in  abeyance.  As  others  cannot,  in  the 
long  run,  think  as  much  of  a  man  as  he 
thinks  of  himself,  he  must  look  to  his  own 
needs.  This  is  both  laudable  and  neces- 
sary; and  if  we  can  see  him  give  a  little 
thought  to  others,  and  yield  a  little  that  he 
might  possibly,  within  the  law  and  custom, 
take  for  himself,  we  regard  him  as  normal. 
We  never  think  of  accusing  him  of  selfishness 
as  long  as  he  takes  only  what  we  regard  as 
fair  to  the  general  lot.  And  society  has 
very  positive  notions  of  the  measure  of  ego- 
ism that  may  fairly  be  expressed  in  what  we 
call  selfishness.  But  this  is  only  one  of  the 
numerous  manifestations  of  egoism.  Multi- 
farious ideas,  ways  and  habits  of  people  who 
are  credited  as  unselfish,  are  as  truly  egois- 
tic, and  they  persist  as  tenaciously  as,  for 
example,  the  morbid  desire  to  get  money; 
and  they  are  as  significant  blemishes  of 
character. 

Egoism  that  is  normal  needs  no  restraint; 

5 


SOME  TANGENTS  OF  THE  EGO 

it  is  only  when  this  absorbing  motive  leads 
us  into  excess  and  erratic  conduct  that  it 
hampers  and  harms  us;  then  it  becomes  a 
proper  subject  for  the  knife. 

Everyone  would  have  a  symmetrical 
character  if  he  could,  for  this  means  the 
greatest  aggregate  of  happiness.  Egoism, 
self-thought  and  self-direction  are  given  us 
that  we  may  order  our  lives  to  the  highest 
purposes.  So  ordered,  we  have  the  most 
ideal  character  that  is  possible  to  us. 

For  convenience  and  power  to  do  things 
the  ego  must  teach  us  habits,  for  these  mul- 
tiply our  hands  and  feet  and  eyes  of  service. 
The  purpose  is,  of  course,  to  create  habits 
that  will  always  help  and  never  hinder.  But 
we  sometimes  make  bad  habits — misleading 
feet  and  uncunning  hands.  Yet  nobody 
tries  to  create  such  things.  Some  men  have 
a  weak  pride  in  them  after  they  are  formed 
by  accident;  but  perversity  is  not  premedi- 
tated. No  man  would  willingly  make  a 
race  less  than  his  best,  and  freakish  habits 
do  not  help  to  the  best  race. 

When  we  investigate  the  bad  and  queer 
habits  we  uncover  a  chain  of  curious  fatuity. 
At  the  core  they  are  found  to  come  almost 
solely  from  the  various  yearnings  and 
antagonisms     of     our    egoistic     emotions. 

6 


SOME  TANGENTS  OF  THE  EGO 

Some  of  them  we  have  ourselves  created 
solely;  some  we  have  been  helped  into  by 
our  environment;  and  many  of  them  have 
come  largely  by  hereditary  influences. 

While  it  is  true  that  we  rarely  succeed  in 
learning  our  own  egoistic  fads  and  angles, 
and  rarely  convince  any  man  of  his,  yet 
most  men  would  like  to  know  if  they  have 
such  foibles;  and,  on  learning  they  have, 
are  eager  to  mend.  There  are  examples  of 
such  mending,  even  metamorphoses  of 
character  as  in  the  so-called  "new  birth" 
under  the  stress  of  religious  feeling.  The 
instant  the  individual  is  thoroughly  con- 
scious that  he  is  far  out  of  the  path  he  de- 
sires to  follow,  he  promptly  tries  to  come 
back  to  it,  and  sometimes  succeeds.  The 
realistic  novels,  and  the  vast  range  of  cari- 
cature, the  sermons  and  essays  on  the  foibles 
of  life,  and  especially  the  hard  knocks  of 
experience,  have  doubtless  helped  some  to 
see  a  part  of  their  own  defects,  and  to  cor- 
rect a  few  of  them. 


II 


The  foremost  egoistic  excess  of  our  time 
is  probably  greed.  It  produces  what  we 
call  variously  avarice,  penuriousness  and 
parsimony.  It  easily  forgets  the  propor- 
tions of  good  taste,  and  may  forget  the  law, 
and  become  criminal.  In  women  of  slight 
self-restraint  and  poor  moral  balance  it  may 
appear  as  kleptomania;  but  the  alienists 
refuse  to  recognize  this  as  a  form  of  lunacy 
— to  them  it  is  merely  a  vulgar  vice.  The 
same  bad  balance  in  men  leads  to  common 
thieving  or  more  refined  rascality.  A  vari- 
ation is  selfishness  for  minor  things,  and  dis- 
regard of  the  rights  of  others.  This  leads 
to  boorishness,  often  shown  in  the  merest 
trifles.  It  may  be  more  conspicuous  because 
it  descends  to  trifles,  as  it  more  shows  the 
lack  of  proportion  begotten  by  the  egoism 
of  selfishness.  Some  men  and  women  of^ 
this  general  class  are  physical  and  moral 
degenerates,  and  become  habitual  criminals, 
apparently  for  pleasure. 

An  opposite  tangent  is  reckless  giving  and 

o 
o 


.    SOME  TANGENTS  OF  THE  EGO 

spending  of  money.  The  victim  has  no  sense 
of  proportion  as  to  values,  and  no  adequate 
idea  of  property.  He  may  strive  to  gain 
and  get  ahead,  and  might  by  the  accidents 
of  life  acquire  a  fortune,  but  he  could  not 
keep  it.  He  would  spend  and  squander  in 
the  most  erratic  manner,  and  become  poor, 
unless  he  died  speedily.  Such  people  are 
useful,  and  often  the  very  best  souls,  but 
they  are  unfit  to  lead  or  direct  in  life. 
They  should  always  follow,  or  be  directed. 

One  of  the  most  disagreeable  tangents, 
and  very  common,  is  excessive  conceit — 
self-enlargement,  egotism  in  its  very  purity. 
This  shows  us  people  who  are  forever  the 
butt  of  jests,  good  subjects  for  the  drama 
and  literature,  and  always  amusing  to 
others.  The  sketches  of  them  are  amusing 
even  to  the  subjects  themselves,  who  are 
always  unconscious  of  their  egotism.  Who 
ever  knew  a  conceited  man  to  be  conscious 
of  his  conceit!  If  such  a  one  should  sud- 
denly know  it,  his  fault  would  be  gone  the 
next  day.  Acquaintances  may  tell  him  of 
his  weakness,  but  to  him  ',they  are  usually 
prejudiced,  or  they  envy  or  dislike  him,  or 
are  conceited  themselves. 

The  peacock  strut  begins  very  early  in 
life.      The  most  striking   form    of   it   is   in 

9 


SOME  TANGENTS  OF  THE  EGO 

children;  it  appears  numerously  and  in  sev- 
eral orders  of  society.  In  no  other  class  of 
persons  is  there  ever  seen  a  mental  bent  that 
is  so  positive,  transparent  and  easily  under- 
stood as  this.  The  symptoms  may  be  vol- 
ubility, romancing,  boasting;  more  likely 
they  are  the  doing  of  all  sorts  of  acts  for 
the  unconscious  purpose  of  attracting  the 
attention  of  others,  especially  strangers,  or 
persons  a  little  strange,  like  neighbors  and 
friends  not  of  the  child's  household  or  set. 
A  child  will  play  for  hours  with  other  child- 
ren or  by  itself  in  the  presence  of  only  its 
mother,  or  some  person  it  does  not  care  to 
impress,  and  play  in  the  most  natural  man- 
ner, and  for  its  own  wholesome  amusement. 
But  let  a  stranger  approach;  then  watch  and 
you  will  see  the  scene  change.  Suddenly 
the  youngster  begins  to  do  a  dozen  different 
things  that  he  had  not  thought  of  before, 
and  they  are  all  such  as  would  presumably 
attract  the  attention  of  the  stranger,  or . 
impress  him  with  the  superiority  of  the 
child.  And  it  can  easily  be  seen  by  a  little 
study  just  what  form  the  conceit  takes.  If 
the  child  is  vain  of  his  general  smartness, 
the  tricks  will  show  it,  as  in  pompous  decla- 
rations about  something — anything  that  he 
fancies  will  make  an  impression.     If  he  is 

10 


SOME  TANGENTS  OF  THE  EGO 

vain  of  his  expert  skill,  or  of  his  prowess, 
he  is  likely  to  show  off  in  some  mimetic  per- 
formance, or  to  pick  a  quarrel  with,  or  domi- 
neer over,  something,  it  matters  little  what; 
it  may  be  a  dog,  or  another  boy.  If  the 
stranger  ignores  the  child  the  latter  will 
become  more  bold  and  outlandish,  till  the 
limit  of  parental  endurance  is  reached;  and 
nothing  that  can  be  done,  short  of  actual 
humiliation  of  the  offender,  has  the  small- 
est effect  of  repression.  On  the  departure 
of  the  stranger  the  child  promptly  returns 
to  his  normal  or  more  wholesome  demeanor, 
as  if  nothing  had  happened.  In  the  half 
hour  he  has  exhibited  two  phases  of  his 
nature  so  different  and  opposite  that  it 
might  have  been  two  children.  The  victim 
of  this  vice  is  often  so  completely  absorbed 
by  it,  that  it  practically  dominates  his  life; 
in  the  presence  of  others  it  rules  him  com- 
pletely; and,  even  when  by  himself,  he  con- 
trives schemes  for  his  own  glorification,  and 
often  displays  a  high  degree  of  ingenuity, 
and  sometimes  the  most  appalling  decep- 
tion, in  this  behalf.  The  two  impulses,  the 
conceit  and  the  strut,  are  substantially 
alike;  they  are  expressions  of  the  same 
emotion,  and  it  is  all  egoistic — wholly 
selfish.     Such  a  child  will  not  do  a  disinter- 

II 


SOME  TANGENTS  OF  THE  EGO 

ested  act  of  kindness  to  another  when  it 
costs  anything  in  effort  or  self-denial. 
He  will  do  kindnesses  on  compulsion,  or 
when  he  sees  something  in  glory  or  atten- 
tion or  privilege  likely  to  come  back  to  him- 
self, but  not  otherwise.  And  efforts  to 
keep  him  to  a  standard  of  duty  are  met  by 
the  dogged  or  surly  reluctance  of  a  rebel- 
lious prisoner.  Duty  is  a  word  unknown  to 
him.  In  these  particulars  boys  are,  I  think, 
a  little  more  barbarous  than  girls,  only  a 
little — any  way  they  are  more  brutal  in 
their  barbarism,  if  not  more  exasperat- 
ing. 

It  is  no  excess  to  say  that  not  one  in  a 
hundred  of  the  caretakers  of  these  children 
has  any  conception  of  the  mental  basis  of 
the  conduct  I  have  described.  To  the  mass 
of  them  it  is  roguishness,  bad  behavior, 
naughtiness  and  meanly  taking  advantage 
of  parent  or  nurse  in  the  presence  of  stran- 
gers— never  the  legitimate  result  of  one 
overpowering  emotion.  They  often  punish 
for  it,  but  not  correctively,  for  they  never 
make  the  child  see  the  mainspring  of  his 
actions,  which  is  the  only  first  step  toward 
any  real  consenting  reformation.  The  child 
is  ashamed  of  the  emotion  the  moment  he 
perceives  it,   as  the  man  is;  and  in  his  soul 

12 


SOME  TANGENTS  OF  THE  EGO 

he  afterwards  thanks  any  power  that  has 
made  him  discover  it. 

The  most  unfortunate  tendency  of  the  ego 
is  showrl  in  the  pathologic  state  of  despond- 
ency, or  melancholia.  Egoism  moves  the 
world,  but  the  moving  force  is  weak  except 
when  we  are  free  from  bodily  sensations 
that  worry  us.  We  can  stand  sensations  that 
hurt;  not  those  that  worry. 

Hunger  may  gnaw  us  until  we  are  fed. 
We  eat  in  pleasure,  and  have  comfort  that 
we  have  eaten,  then  we  take  up  our  burdens 
and  go  on.  So  of  other  sensations  and 
wants.  But  too  much  introspection,  too 
much  thought  about  self — the  physical  me 
— hampers  our  power  of  objective  action  and 
stops  all  good  creative  work. 

A  normal  man  goes  into  battle  with  cour- 
age and  forgets  himself;  or  he  carries  for- 
ward large  enterprises  of  peace  with  no 
worry  and  little  feeling  about  his  personal 
self.  He  is  dominated  by  the  one  emotion 
to  pursue  the  objective  purposes  of  his  life. 
But  let  him  have  a  harmless  palpitation  of 
the  heart,  or  instable  abdominal  nerves,  and 
his  mind  will  wander  from  his  work;  he  will 
have  all  sorts  of  vagaries  of  introspection, 
and  believe  he  has  a  mortal  disease.  He 
may  become  an  incapable  baby,  or  a  cring- 

13 


SOME  TANGENTS  OF  THE  EGO 

ing  coward.  He  cannot  sleep.  He  may 
force  himself  to  go  on  with  his  work,  but  it 
will  be  a  listless  performance.  He  may  dis- 
cover that  his  memory  is  poor,  and  fear 
insanity,  or  be  afraid  for  his  personal  safety; 
and  all  this  when  his  sensations  are  slight 
and  without  danger.  Why  has  his  back- 
bone disappeared?  Not  usually  owing  to 
any  serious  sickness,  but  because  the  pecul- 
iar nature  of  his  disorder  has  completely 
changed  the  relation  of  his  ego  to  his  work 
and  to  the  world. 

This  melancholy  ego  is  really  the  most 
selfish  of  them  all,  only  in  an  unusual  direc- 
tion. Unfettered  by  such  self-scrutiny,  we 
have  the  normal  ambition  for  the  world's 
rewards.  When  the  gloom  or  the  bodily 
fear  strikes  us  we  are  more  than  ever  selfish, 
but  not  for  fortune  or  fame — in  that  direc- 
tion the  emotion  may  cease,  while  it  is  alert 
to  escape  from  a  physical  calamity.  Nos- 
talgia, or  homesickness,  is  another  variation 
of  this  type. 

Tea,  coffee,  tobacco  and  alcohol  sometimes 
help  a  man  for  the  moment  by  freeing  him 
from  some  of  these  annoying  sensations.  But 
it  is  a  question  whether  these  and  other  stim- 
ulants do  not,  all  of  them,  in  the  long  run, 
do  more  harm  than  good.     That  men  often 

14 


SOME  TANGENTS  OF  THE  EGO 

demand  them  so  strenuously  is  but  another 
evidence  of  egoistic  insistence. 

Another  form  of  mental  twist  is  closely 
related  to  melancholy,  namely,  that  exhib- 
ited by  the  intense  absorption  of  an  invalid 
in  the  things  that  concern  himself.  His  pains, 
feelings,  thoughts  and  interests  are  his  uni- 
verse. He  is  less  afraid  of  dying  than  he  is 
that  others  will  not  regard  him  as  needing 
attention.  The  well-meant  remark  of  a 
visitor  that  he  looks  well  to-day,  throws  a 
shadow  over  him  that  lasts  for  hours.  He 
even  becomes  cross,  and,  after  his  visitor 
has  gone,  will  remark  on  how  absurd  it  is  to 
come  in  and  talk  to  a  sick  man  in  that  way. 
He  can,  in  a  measure,  direct  his  thoughts  to 
the  business  of  life,  and  he  worries  less  than 
some  melancholies  do  about  dying.  The 
paramount  interest  of  the  world  to  him  is 
that  his  needs  of  the  moment  shall  be  con- 
served. He  may  come  to  have  pleasure  in 
his  invalidism,  and  be  grieved,  not  merely 
that  people  should  say  he  looks  well,  but 
that  he  should  recover,  and  so  cease  to  be 
an  object  of  interest  and  solicitude  on  the 
part  of  others.  Such  people  may  be  said  to 
be  sick  long  after  they  are  well!  They  are 
the  clay  with  which  miracles  are  wrought 
by  faith  and  prayer,  by  mind  cures  and  mes- 

15 


SOME  TANGENTS  OF  THE  EGO 

merizers;  by  laying  on  of  hands,  and  by 
non-science  called  science.  But  the  mir- 
acles consist  solely  in  some  mental  impres- 
sion that,  for  the  moment,  creates  a  new 
hope  and  removes  the  egoism,  or  subordi- 
nates the  emotional  basis  on  which  the 
invalidism  rests  and  has  continued.  A  fire 
in  the  house,  an  earthquake,  or  the  sudden 
appearance  of  a  mouse,  might  accomplish 
the  purpose  quite  as  well. 

Over-civilized  and  over-developed  society 
always  contains  numerous  specimens  of 
this  unfortunate  class.  They  need  some- 
thing to  break  in  upon  the  monotony  of  their 
lives;  they  need  to  be  shocked,  hypnotized 
or  angered  by  something  that  will  change 
the  current  of  their  thoughts,  and  for  the 
time  fill  them  with  some  dominating  emo- 
tions other  than  those  of  an  exalted  egoism 
concerned  with  their  own  sensations.  The 
pity  is  that  now  and  then  we  shock  the 
wrong  person,  and  are  cruel  to  the  sick  who 
never  magnify  their  ills,  and  could  not  be 
cured  by  any  change  of  emotions.  But  such 
mistakes  are  no  worse  than,  with  the  best 
intentions,  we  make  in  other  ways  in  our 
dealings  with  people  from  day  to  day;  for 
if  there  is  anything  we  are  nearly  certain  to 
do,  it  is  to  misjudge  the  motives  and  emotions 

i6 


SOME  TANGENTS  OF  THE  EGO 

that  govern  other  people.  If  our  estimate 
of  the  motives  of  others  comes  to  their 
knowledge,  .they  are  usually  either  outraged 
or  flattered,  and  generally  have  a  poor  opin- 
ion of  our  discernment. 

Allied  to  the  peculiarity  just  described  is 
a  feverish  yearning  for  amusement  and 
entertainment — what  some  have  called  the 
"company  fever";  company  mania  would 
be  a  better  name.  It  besets  some  people 
from  infancy  to  middle  life,  and  after.  In 
childhood,  crying  and  general  fuss  compel 
attention  and  coddling.  The  more  highly 
wrought  the  parents,  and  the  more  nervous 
the  child,  the  more  he  is  entertained  and 
kept  excited,  so  that  he  easily  grows  to  have 
a  constant  yearning  for  this  sort  of  stimula- 
tion. If  he  is  sick  or  weak,  the  desire  is 
accentuated,  and  he  may  become  nearly 
insane  on  the  subject.  When  he  reaches  this 
pass,  his  emotions  easily  drift  into  a  mixed 
desire  for  entertainment  and  sympathy. 

Such  people  constitute  a  distinct  class  of 
what  might  be  called  emotional  freaks. 
Many  of  them  have  the  hysterical  temper- 
ament in  a  high  degree.  They  have  an 
unwholesome  and  intense  avidity  for  atten- 
tion and  sympathy.  They  develop  such 
ardor  of  desire  for  these  favors  that  they 

17 


SOME  TANGENTS  OF  THE  EGO 

forget  the  moral  law,  in  their  schemes  to 
command  them;  they  deceive  in  the  most 
extreme  and  cunning  fashion,  and  literally 
stop  at  nothing  to  attain  their  ends.  As 
these  schemes  of  deception  are  often  asso- 
ciated with  hysteria,  the  symptoms  of  this 
disorder  have  in  many  minds  come  to  be 
regarded  as  voluntary  and  wholly  controlla- 
ble. This  theory  is  only  partly  true,  and, 
as  to  many  hysterical  persons,  it  is  false  and 
cruelly  unfair. 

The  "injured  air"  is  one  of  the  variations 
shown  by  these  people.  It  may  command 
attention,  and  so  pander  to  their  emotions. 
When  carried  to  great  lengths  this  feeling 
impels  to  extreme  self-abnegation  and  vol- 
untary martyrdom,  and  occasionally  leads 
intense  natures  to  suicide.  Most  of  the 
suicides,  especially  among  the  young,  are 
due  to  this  debauchery  of  emotion,  and  not 
to  fear  of  disgrace  or  prison.  And  we  must 
remember  that  the  young,  even  small  chil- 
dren, may  have  these  uncanny  emotional 
promptings.  There  are  plentiful  records  of 
moody  school-children  committing  suicide 
when  smarting  under  some  rebuke  or  in  the 
frenzy  of  jealousy.  Of  such  cases  the  greatest 
number  are  probably  between  fifteen  and 
twenty-five  years  of  age,  but  middle  life  is 

i8 


SOME  TANGENTS  OF  THE  EGO 

by   no   means   exempt   from  similar  weak- 
nesses. 

Love  is  mostly  egoistic — that  is,  selfish. 
We  love  too  often  for  the  possible  rewards; 
love,  hoping  for  a  return  in  some  sort  and 
degree.  The  ardent  love  one  person  has  for 
another  is  usually  beautiful,  and  seeins  un- 
selfish. But  watch  and  observe,  and  you 
may  soon  see  evidence  that  the  moving  pur- 
pose is  less  love  than  the  hope  of  being 
loved;  the  hope  of  some  return.  How  love 
ministers  to  the  egoism  of  the  individ- 
ual is  shown  in  the  accessory  emotion  of 
jealousy.  Love  that  is  completely  un- 
selfish hardly  knows  the  meaning  of  jealousy, 
and  is  incapable  of  it.  Jealousy  is  an  egois- 
tic fear  of  being  defrauded  sentimentally, 
and  is  by  inversion  an  attribute  of  selfish 
love.  Jealousy  is  often  fired  by  trifles.  We 
are  apt  to  think  a  man  is  growing  childish 
when  he  shows  a  childish  estimate  of  the 
acts  of  others  that  refer  to  himself.  We  for- 
get that  his  egoism  and  feelings  may  be 
touched,  and  so  throw  him  off  his  balance  on 
this  point,  while  he  maybe  correct  in  every 
other  particular.  Woe  be  to  the  balance 
of  that  man  whose  sense  of  what  attentions 
are  due  him  from  others,  becomes  exalted. 
For  he  may  show  the  most  silly  effeminacy 

19 


SOME  TANGENTS  OF  THE  EGO 

in  certain  directions,  and  do  all  manner  of 
foolish  things,  even  suicide. 

Lovers'  quarrels  are  mostly  due  to  failure 
of  adjustment  to  each  other  of  the  two 
egoisms — the  self-regard  of  the  two.  There 
is  no  trouble  about  the  love  that  each  has 
for  the  other;  no  quarrel  ever  comes  from 
that.  The  quarrels  come,  rather,  from  the 
love  each  has  for  self,  and  the  estimate 
that  each  has  of  the  duty  and  love  the 
other  ozves.  It  is  the  fear  and  uncertainty 
about  the  love  receivable  that  is  the  matter; 
never  about  the  love  payable.  It  is  a  debtor 
and  credit  situation.  We  always  have  more 
trouble  about  the  bills  receivable — we  are 
afraid  they  may  not  be  paid,  or  not  paid 
promptly  or  in  the  exact  currency  to  please 
us.  We  do  not  worry  so  much  about  the 
bills  payable,  although  it  is  a  green  spot  in 
the  record  of  human  nature  that  some  peo- 
ple have  large  scruples  on  that  score.  That 
they  are  thus  sensitive  gives  us  a  new  faith 
in  human  kind,  and  a  better  hope  for  the 
world. 

Many  of  the  most  fascinating  people 
reveal,  sooner  or  later,  that  there  lurks 
beneath  their  gentle  demeanor  a  consuming 
ambition  for  personal  gratification,  regard- 
less of  others.     It  is   a  sad  disillusionment 

20 


SOME  TANGENTS  OF  THE  EGO 

to  find  this  out.  On  first  acquaintance  we 
are  forcibly  and  instantly  drawn  to  them; 
their  charm  is  like  a  June  morning,  and 
they  seem  faultless.  Sometimes  their 
selfish  emotion  may  remain  permanently 
hidden  from  most  of  their  friends,  but  the 
discerning  ones  make  the  discovery,  and 
now  and  then  some  emotional  explosion 
reveals  it  to  the  general  gaze.  Then  we 
discover  just  what  a  human  vampire,  suck- 
ing the  blood  of  personal  devotion,  really  is. 
That  the  vampire  should  generally  be  igno- 
rant of  this  ruling  purpose  of  his  own  life,  is 
the  pitiful  fact. 

While  nearly  every  one  likes  to  be  loved, 
it  is  the  dictum  of  some  writers  of  both 
sexes  that  women  most  covet  being  told  of  it. 
The  testimony  is  so  unanimous  that  it  must 
be  true,  and  egoism  is,  of  course,  at  the 
bottom  of  it.  Kipling  has  shown  vividly 
how  the  emotion  can,  in  a  woman,  run  wild. 
She  fishes  for  praise,  and  makes  talk  for 
love  words,  and  sulks  if  she  fails  to  get 
them;  yet  she  picks  flaws  in  the  very  terms 
of  the  homage  paid  her.  If  she  is  told  she 
is  beautiful  and  lovely  she  remembers,  or 
invents,  some  prior  hint  that  contradicts  it, 
as  though  from  sheer  malice  she  would  see 
if   she    can    goad   her   admirer   to   greater 


SOME  TANGENTS  OF  THE  EGO 

extravagance.  Uncandid  in  her  angling  for 
flattery,  she  rebukes  the  slightest,  even 
venial,  insincerity  in  the  terms  in  which  it 
is  uttered,  and  will  repeat  the  game  often 
— and  quite  oblivious  of  the  fact  that  she  is 
playing  it. 

Every  normal  nature  has  an  avidity  for 
returned  affection.  But  there  are  degrees 
of  it;  it  may  be  wholesome;  it  may  be  over- 
powering and  wanton.  It  may,  when  whole- 
some, be  hidden,  like  commendable  conceit, 
so  that  when  it  is  discovered  it  appears  to 
have  ingenuously  tried  to  keep  hidden. 
Then  it  is  like  a  delicate  perfume;  and  it 
glorifies  human  life  and  living. 

Bashfulness,  which  is  nearly  universal,  is 
sometimes  so  extreme  as  to  amount  to  a 
positive  deformity,  and  it  makes  people 
afraid  to  act;  they  hesitate,  fear  conse- 
quences, fear  further  embarrassments  to 
such  a  degree  that  they  never  can  take  an 
efficient  stand  in  anything. 

This  peculiar  emotion,  when  in  an  extreme 
degree,  makes  its  victim  so  fearful  of  meet- 
ing people  that  he  is  liable  to  become  a 
recluse;  he  shuns  not  merely  society,  but 
his  friends — the  people  with  whom  he  could 
work.  He  sees  a  friend  coming  down  the 
street,  and  crosses  to  the  other  side  to  avoid 

22 


SOME  TANGENTS  OF  THE  EGO 

him.  He  cannot  be  depended  upon;  he 
cannot  depend  upon  himself.  He  knows  his 
weakness,  but  is  powerless  to  overcome  it. 
This  phase  constitutes  in  part  the  picture  of 
melancholia,  but  it  may  occur  without  that 
mental  defect. 

It  seems  almost  wicked  to  say  that  too 
much  politeness  is  a  character  blemish. 
Yet  it  is  true,  and  I  do  not  mean  the  insin- 
cere politeness  alleged  of  many  people — 
even  of  a  whole  nation,  but  the  genuine 
quality  of  the  best  of  our  kind.  True  and 
thoughtful  politeness  always  renders  social 
intercourse  more  comfortable.  But  when 
excessive  it  becomes  a  burden,  an  embarrass- 
ment that  makes  you  shun  your  friends. 
They  will  hide  your  hat  to  make  you  stay 
and  dine  with  them,  and  then  embarrass 
you  by  refusing  to  accept  the  smallest  favor; 
or  if  they  do  accept,  will  cover  you  with  a 
speech  on  your  virtues  and  their  unworthi- 
ness.  Fearing  they  may  violate  the  best 
amenities,  they  lose  all  sense  of  relation,  and 
by  over-doing  them  waste  the  energy  they 
need  for  the  business  of  life,  and  so  make  life 
actually  more  difficult.  Worse,  this  blemish 
makes  a  man  disingenuous.  In  your  com- 
pany he  will  pretend  to  like  a  thing  because 
you  like  it,  or  he  thinks  you  do;  or  forego  a 

23 


SOME  TANGENTS  OF  THE  EGO 

thing  he  desires  because  he  thinks  you  dis- 
like it.  Ten  chances  to  one  he  makes  a  mis- 
take as  to  your  tastes,  and  so  both  are  made 
uncomfortable,  and  there  is  no  gain  any- 
where. And  if  you  detect  his  instinctive 
tricks  of  politeness,  and  try  to  foil  him  by  a 
counter-play  of  the  same  sort,  you  will  prob- 
ably increase  the  confusion. 

One  of  the  most  insistent  tangents  of  the 
ego  is  shown  in  its  irritation  by  the  acts  and 
words  of  others.  The  ego  in  some  men  is 
more  easily  nagged  than  it  is  in  others — it 
has  its  weak  side  in  all  of  us.  It  is  jarred 
most  by  the  things  that  are  avoidable;  and 
these  are  very  largely  the  acts  of  other  people. 
The  unavoidable  things,  even  if  they  are  irri- 
tating, do  not  disturb  it  half  as  much.  The 
wind  and  rain;  the  noise  of  trains  and  mills 
may  be  endured.  But  irritating  things  done 
by  people  are  avoidable,  and  therefore  exas- 
perating. If  all  people  affected  us  alike,  or 
if  they  all  presented  the  same  moral  picture 
to  us,  we  should  be  equally  irritated  by  the 
same  acts  done  by  any  of  them.  But  they  do 
not  affect  us  alike.  Comparative  strangers, 
or  people  unfamiliar  to  us,  have  a  measure 
of  novelty  and  uncommonness  in  behavior 
and  looks.  This,  in  a  degree,  overcomes 
the   irritation,    or  has    a  neutralizing  effect 

24 


SOME  TANGENTS  OF  THE  EGO 

upon  it,  and  so  it  annoys  us  less.  Then, 
with  strangers,  we  have  an  attitude  of  reserve 
that  helps  us  to  overcome  the  sense  of 
annoyance,  and  we  are  helped  by  an  intuitive 
caution  to  hide  disagreeable  manners  from 
those  who  do  not  know  that  we  can  display 
them.  Besides,  as  to  the  strangers,  it  does 
not  always  occur  to  us  that  they  can  avoid 
their  disagreeable  ways. 

It  is  different  with  our  families.  Our  own 
people  have  no  such  defense  against  our  crit- 
icism. We  are  so  familiar  with  them,  and 
they  with  us,  that  we  have  less  to  hide  from 
them,  and  so  there  is  less  impediment  to  our 
impulses.  We  make  their  lives  feel  our  irri- 
tation; we  first  object  to  what  they  do  or  say 
that  is  innately  rasping  to  our  nerves;  then 
we  become  more  annoyed  at  the  same  things; 
repetition  begets  increased  irritability. 
Then  the  ego  is  nagged  by  the  things  that 
are  not  innately  irritating,  but  become  so 
because  these  familiar  persons  happen  to  do 
them.  Finally,  nothing  they  do  or  can 
do  is  satisfactory;  their  every  act  is  annoy- 
ing; and  even  their  faces,  forms,  voices  and 
gait  start  within  us  a  disagreeable  feeling, 
and  create  rebellion. 

This  is  not  a  fancy  picture.  It  is  often 
seen  in   the  modern   family  of  highly  culti- 

25 


SOME  TANGENTS  OF  THE  EGO 

vated  people.  A  man  may  be  genial  and 
moderate  to  the  outside  world,  and  have  a 
reputation  for  justice  and  gentleness,  but  to 
those  nearest  him,  the  members  of  his  own 
household,  or  some  of  them,  he  is  a  cross, 
sour,  snarling,  ungenerous  animal.  He  may 
be  aware  of  his  infirmity  and  try  to  avoid  it, 
but  he  frequently  breaks  away  and  explodes 
in  anger  at  some  inadequate  thing,  or 
expends  a  vast  amount  of  energy  in  con- 
trolling his  temper.  In  either  case  he  is  a 
pitiable  object,  for  he  is  bound  to  end  with 
injured  nerves  and  some  degree  of  moral 
chaos. 

Cases  of  this  kind  sometimes  become  so 
extreme  as  to  constitute  true  insanity — a 
form  known  as  oikiomania.  The  irritability 
may  be  toward  a  particular  member  of  the 
family,  and  may  be  life-long,  or  it  may  be 
directed  against  all  of  them.  It  is  more 
likely  to  exist  between  parents  and  children 
than  between  two  children,  and  it  is  often 
strong  between  husbands  and  wives.  It  is 
liable  to  fluctuate,  depending  for  its  varia- 
tions on  the  physical  condition  of  the  indi- 
vidual, the  degree  of  fatigue,  and  the 
amount  of  work  and  worry  in  other  direc- 
tions. It  is  often  marked  toward  those  that 
are  intensely  loved.     A  woman   is  unhappy 

26 


SOME  TANGENTS  OF  THE  EGO 

with  her  lover  out  of  her  sight;  yet  when  he 
is  present  she  quarrels  with  him  constantly. 
The  history  of  love  is  full  of  examples 
of  this  sort.  The  lovers  quarrel  as  easily  as 
the  sparks  fly  upward;  they  separate  only  to 
be  drawn  together  by  an  irresistible  impulse 
— to  quarrel,  to  part  again  and  again,  or 
reach  a  final  tragedy. 

When  these  people  know  their  weakness, 
their  efforts  to  mend  are  usually  an  object- 
lesson  of  wonder.  They  go  at  it  with  stren- 
uous will  and  tense  muscles,  and  try  to  force 
themselves  to  ignore  the  things  that  irritate. 
If  they  succeed,  it  is  always  at  great  loss  in 
nerve  force;  it  is  not  an  economical  way. 
The  only  profitable  course  is  by  the  gentle 
wooing  of  a  sense  of  tranquillity  and  relaxa- 
tion that  is  proof  against  annoyance.  The 
mood  is  everything,  and  it  can  be  enticed, 
but  not  with  clenched  fists.  The  great  thing 
is  to  start  right';  then  the  growth  is  easy. 
It  is  like  dropping  from  a  rapid  gait  to  a  slow 
one — it  helps  deliberation  in  all  things.  An 
impetuous  man,  trying  to  say  a  serious  thing 
hurriedly,  is  embarrassed  and  worried  over 
the  effort.  When  he  can  resolve,  and  stick 
to  it,  that  he  will  speak  slowly  and  deliber- 
ately, he  becomes  a  changed  man.  His 
thoughts  come  easily,  and  readily  fall   into 

2^ 


SOME  TANGENTS  OF  THE  EGO 

words.  He  cannot  be  stampeded  by  dis- 
turbing influences.  A  steady,  slow  stroke 
of  the  pen  may  annul  the  muscular  confu- 
sion of  writer's  cramp.  The  writing  is 
smooth  and  easy,  and  by  some  strange  influ- 
ence on  the  mind  the  thinking  is  easier,  and 
the  temper  smoother  also. 

When,  as  usually  happens,  the  remedy 
suggested  is  beyond  his  reach,  the  best  way 
is  to  remove  the  oikiomaniac  from  his  fam- 
ily, keep  him  among  strangers,  and  if  these 
become  too  familiar,  remove  him  again. 
His  disturbed  ego,  freed  from  its  irritations, 
rests  and  is  restored.  Various  diversions 
fill  its  life,  and  it  forgets  its  horrors. 

An  amusing  sign  of  this  mental  drift  is 
shown  in  antagonism  to  any  proffered 
advice  or  leading.  Many  a  man  discovers 
that  he  is  cross  and  snappish  to  his  family 
and  friends,  and  restrains  himself  from  the 
major  offense.  But  he  continues  to  show 
the  same  lamentable  trait  by  resisting  every 
suggestion  made  to  him.  His  friends  under- 
stand this,  and  learn  to  manage  him.  If  it 
is  vital  to  have  his  support  of  some  plan, 
they  will  first  disfavor  it  in  his  presence,  or 
lead  him  by  non-committal  allusions  to  pro- 
pose the  scheme  himself.  They  would  not 
dare    to   say   to  him:  "We   should    like   to 

28 


SOME  TANGENTS  OF  THE  EGO 

have  you  approve  of  this  measure,"  etc., 
unless  they  wished  him  to  reject  it.  But 
they  say,  rather:  "This  measure  has  been 
proposed,  but  probably  you  don't  care  to 
consider  it,"  and  his  impulse  is  prompt  to 
say  that  he  jikes  the  idea.  By  a  little 
adroitness  these  people  can  be  led  in  this 
way  for  years  without  their  suspicion. 

The  hyperesthesia  of  the  e^o  is  not  always 
so  much  shown  toward  one's  intimates  as 
toward  the  general  conditions  of  his  environ- 
ment, both  personal  and  material.  Every- 
thing annoys  him;  nothing  is  just  right. 
He  is  worried  by  everything  less  than  per- 
fection, and  his  standards  are  captious. 
The  day  is  too  hot  or  too  cold;  the  soup 
was  poorly  seasoned  and  the  steak  was 
tough;  his  collar  did  not  fit,  and  his 
neck-tie  was  soiled.  His  servant  an- 
noyed him  by  not  knowing  the  unknow- 
able. There  was  a  draught  from  the 
window  that  distracted  him.  Yes,  the  book 
was  a  good  one,  but  why  would  any  writer 
persist  in  using  such  vulgarisms? — The  con- 
cert? It  was  well  enough,  except  the  work 
of  the  tenor,  who  sang  flat.  And  so  on 
interminably;  it  is  the  tangent  of  the  blase 
man  or  woman  who  has  seen  the  world,  and 
is  tired  of  it;  of  people  who  have  allowed 

29 


SOME  TANGENTS  OF  THE  EGO 

their  irritability  to  dominate  their  lives, 
and  make  them,  as  well  as  their  neighbors, 
miserable. 

This  bent  usually  begins  in  childhood,  in 
an  excessive  desire  for  entertainment,  a 
restless  ardor  for  new  things.  The  desire  is 
a  normal  one,  and  all  children  have  it;  nor 
is  it  necessarily  harmful.  But  indulgent 
parents  and  nurses  usually  help  to  make  it 
grow — they  never  moderate  or  repress  it. 
When  excessive  it  is  like  a  "wild"  locomo- 
tive, and  tends  to  hysteria  and  "nervous 
prostration."  It  grows  by  what  it  feeds 
upon;  helps  to  make  the  old-young  people, 
with  little  of  the  ideal  simplicity  of  youth; 
people  whose  nerves  are  rasped,  and  teeth 
set  on  edge  by  life's  atoms.  From  such 
material  emerge  the  grown-up  irritables  for 
whom  this  world  is,  apparently,  unfit. 

There  are  people  of  passive  natures  whose 
lives  are,  unknown  to  them,  one  long  con- 
tinuity of  protest.  They  never  compliment 
or  express  active  satisfaction  in  anything; 
it  never  occurs  to  them  to  do  it.  They  men- 
tion the  adverse  and  disagreeable  things. 
Nothing  is  quite  right.  Yet  they  rarely 
scold  and  are  not  rampant  fault-finders;  and 
they  are  not  bad  people.  They  have  no 
ardor  of  delights  to   mention;    nor    enthu- 

30 


SOME  TANGENTS  OF  THE  EGO 

siasms  to  voice.  Ask  them  how  the  journey 
was,  and  they  reply  that  it  was  or  was  not 
unpleasant.  The  lecture  was  bad  or  it  was 
not;  the  weather  was  or  was  not  disagreea- 
ble. The  language  is  always  along  the  high- 
way of  protest,  never  in  terms  of  approval 
or  pleasure.  They  are  not  merely  wanting 
in  enthusiasm;  they  kill  it  by  a  withering 
blight.  In  giving  vent  to  your  enthusiasm 
in  their  presence  you  feel  yourself  sinning 
against  good  form.  They  are  wet  blankets 
to  enthusiasm  of  any  sort;  it  withers  in  their 
presence  like  a  flame  under  a  fire-extin- 
guisher. 

We  see  every  day  an  egoistic  tangent  that 
is  the  product  of  a  mixture  of  bashfulness 
and  conceit,  and  it  is  both  curious  and  inter- 
esting. One  man  is  very  polite  with  stran- 
gers and,  in  public,  deferential  to  every 
body,  even  over-polite.  With  his  own  peo- 
ple, and  hidden  from  the  public  gaze,  he 
behaves  like  the  average  man  or  even  less 
politely.  He  probably  reasons  automatically 
that  politeness  is  right  and  desirable,  and 
the  due  of  certain  others;  but  the  important 
fact  is  that  it  soothes  his  own  feelings  and 
gives  him  a  sense  of  comfort  to  observe  it 
toward  outsiders.  And  this  is  an  analysis 
that  he  would  be  the  last  man  in  the  world 

31 


SOME  TANGENTS  OF  THE  EGO 

to  make  to  himself;  to  him  this  sort  of  con- 
duct is  normal  and  requires  no  more  expla- 
nation than  the  shape  of  his  face,  or  the 
color  of  his  hair — nor  half  so  much,  for  he 
sees  in  his  physical  body  evidence  of  his 
heredity,  and  that  is  capable  of  analysis. 

Another  man  is  gruff  and  severe  to  the 
public.  With  his  intimates  and  in  his  pri- 
vate confidential  life  he  is  gentle  and 
natural;  says  what  he  means  and  always 
means  what  he  says.  But  project  him  into 
the  public,  let  him  feel  that  he  is  under 
observation,  and  his  demeanor  changes  in 
an  instant.  Now  he  is  grandiose  and 
austere,  wrinkles  his  brow,  talks  and  acts 
on  the  plane  of  defiance  and  buncomb.  He 
quotes,  probably  uses  slang,  and  acts  per- 
haps as  if  he  were  a  great  personage  or 
were  conscious  that  he  is  making  history. 
.He  has  personal  dignity  to  conserve,  and 
it  would  not  be  in  keeping  with  this  to 
ask  favors  or  put  himself  under  obliga- 
tion. His  conduct  and  speech  reveal  'all 
this  to  others,  but  he  is  as  unconscious 
of  it  as  he  is  of  the  function  of  his  spleen. 
He  needs  or  wants  a  service  of  another  per- 
son, and  it  would  favor  his  getting  it  if  he 
should  ask  in  a  candid  and  simple  manner. 
But  he  could  not  goad  himself  to  do  such  a 

32 


SOME  TANGENTS  OF  THE  EGO 

thing,  and  he  so  frames  his  petition  that  if 
the  favor  is  granted  it  shall  seem  to  have 
been  proffered  by  the  other  person.  He 
avoids  the  possibility  of  a  rebuke  or  a 
refusal.  He  wishes  to  borrow  some  utensil 
of  a  neighbor  and  it  would  seem  a  natural 
thing  to  go  and  ask  the  loan  of  it.  But 
that  is  not  his  way.  He  goes  to  the  neigh- 
bor and,  after  making  some  conversation 
about  commonplaces,  he  says,  as  if  by  pure 
accident  or  as  an  after-thought,  "I  suppose 
you  wouldn't  like  to  loan  me  your  plow  for 
a  day;"  or,  "How  would  you  like  to  let  me 
have  your  plow  to-morrow?"  When  such  a 
man  proposes  marriage  he  is  liable  to  do  it 
in  a  way  to  entrap  the  woman  into  answer- 
ing a  question  he  has  not  asked.  If  her 
answer  is  negative  his  conceit  is  spared,  for 
he  did  not  really  ask  her;  he  only  gave  her 
a  chance  to  express  her  sentiments  if  she 
would. 

Once  a  New  England  Yankee  came  to  me 
for  an  official  favor  that  he  regarded  as  very 
important.  He  believed  that  my  consent 
was  necessary.  It  meant  a  great  deal  to 
him.  It  should  have  been  easy  to  state 
his  case,  and  ask  for  the  thing  desired;  but 
that  was  not  the  way  he  did.  He  merely 
said,  "Don't  you  think  you   had  better"  do 

33 


SOME  TANGENTS  OF  THE  EGO 

so  and  so?  To  have  asked  the  favor  in  terms 
would  have  made  him  blush  to  his  ears,  and 
have  been  a  distinct  shock  to  his  uncon- 
scious conceit. 

The  peculiar  egoism  of  these  persons 
entails  as  much  pain  when  they  have  to  con- 
fess an  error  as  when  they  petition  for  a 
favor.  And  they  pick  their  words  and  plan 
their  actions  so  as  to  avoid  it  if  possible. 
Their  opinions  are  put  in  a  tentative  or  an 
interrogative  way,  so  that  they  cannot  be 
driven  into  a  corner  and  forced  to  confess 
themselves  wrong.  If  you  ask  one  of  them 
a  question  that  can  be  directly  answered 
only  by  a  number,  he  does  not  answer  it 
directly.  Suppose  he  thinks  the  number  is 
67 — he  does  not  say  that.  He  says,  "Per- 
haps it  is  67,"  or,  "Don't  you  think  it  is 
67?" — thus  escaping  conviction  if  the  figure 
is  wrong.  It  is  a  cowardly  sort  of  conceit, 
but  it  is  a  common  one. 

Talk  furnishes  only  one  of  a  thousand 
ways  of  working  off  a  certain  kind  of  energy, 
and  ministering  to  egoistic  needs  that  one 
feels  without  knowing  it.  Loquacity  is  one 
of  man's  numerous  unconscious  excesses; 
loquacity,  I  mean,  in  the  interest  of  the 
ego.  He  does  not  know  (but  his  neighbors 
do)  that  he  is  forever  talking  for  his  own 

34 


SOME  TANGENTS  OF  THE  EGO 

pleasure;  and  he  is  surprised  if  such  a 
thought  is  suggested  to  him.  Observe  a 
loquacious  woman  visit  with  a  silent  one 
who  listens  well;  after  an  hour  she  will  come 
away  with  delight  at  the  charming  visit  she 
has  had,  and  full  of  praise  for  the  other 
woman.  But  the  latter  has  not  spoken  a 
dozen  words,  and  the  few  she  has  uttered 
were  tentative  hints.  The  visitor  has  talked 
incessantly — and  thinks  her  hostess  a  superb 
conversationalist. 

Probably  few  of  the  very  talkative  people 
can  ever  lessen  their  habit;  it  would  profit 
some  of  them  greatly  if  they  could. 

But  the  habit  is  not  always  nor  wholly 
unfortunate.  It  furnishes  a  vent  for  nervous 
energy  that  otherwise  might  explode  in  a 
worse  way.  Moreover,  it  helps  bashful 
people  over  their  difificulties.  Frequently  a 
rapid  monologue  will  spare  one  from  the 
abhorrent  sense  of  blushing.  It  is  like 
twirling  one's  watch  chain,  or  like  the  little 
laughter  with  which  embarrassed  people 
speak.  It  has  another  useful  ministry, 
namely,  to  furnish  a  refuge  for  some  silent 
people.  A  loquacious  man  needs  a  silent 
one  to  listen  to  him — a  garrulous  one  is  a 
bore.  Note  his  chafing  at  a  talkative  per- 
son who  gets  in  the  first  word.     But  a  silent 

35 


SOME  TANGENTS  OF  THE  EGO 

one,  who  will  listen  attentively,  look  intel- 
ligent, reply  in  hints  and  monosyllables  that 
will  rather  help  his  utterances  to  seem 
acceptable,  is  the  delight  of  his  life.  The 
proper  niche  for  the  silent  man  is  to  get 
into  relations  with  a  talkative  one.  He  acts 
as  a  sort  of  buffer — something  at  which  sen- 
tences may  be  fired,  and  that  will  not  stop 
the  flow  of  them  nor  interject  embarrassing 
talk, 'but  listen  and  look  appreciative.  And 
the  comfort  is  mutual — the  adjustment  is 
perfect — the  quiet  man  is  happy  also.  He 
has  found  his  complement,  and  is  glad. 

Two  sharply  contrasted  phases  of  the  talk- 
ative impulse  stand  out  in  the  observation 
of  us  all.  One  is  shown  by  the  man  who 
ripples  on  like  a  singing  bird.  It  is  simply 
his  own  sweet  chatter  on  anything  in  the 
universe,  merely  for  the  joy  of  saying  it — 
and  as  guileless  as  the  air.  He  is  amusing. 
But  the  contrast  is  in  the  man  who  has  his 
say  (and  it  is  an  interminable  one)  in 
antagonisms  and  personal  insistence.  He 
has  fixed  views  on  some  things,  and  adverse 
views  on  everything  that  another  may  pro- 
pose. You  cannot  possibly  make  an  initial 
statement  that  he  will  completely  agree  with; 
and  he  will  fly  off  into  a  long  argument  on 
every  trifling  point  he  can  antagonize.     In 

36 


SOME  TANGENTS  OF  THE  EGO 

his  conversation  there  is  no  such  thing  as 
give  and  take.  He  only  does  the  one  and 
does  it  with  such  effect  of  omniscience  as  to 
either  make  you  feel  that  you  are  in  the 
presence  of  a  superior  being,  or  that  a  fiend- 
ish animal  has  fastened  its  claws  into  your 
back,  and  will  not  let  go. 

Undue  egoism  is  shown  in  the  tenacity 
with  which  people  cling  to  their  beliefs, 
religious,  political  and  ethical,  as  well  as  in 
their  intolerance  of  opposite  beliefs.  Once 
committed  to  a  particular  idea,  such  a  man 
sticks  to  it.  He  grows  to  believe  it  more 
and  more,  and  that  contrary  views  portend 
ruin.  He  is  impatient  and  testy  with  those 
who  have  different  ideas.  A  moderate  man 
expresses  himself  in  moderate  terms  on  a 
public  question,  but  somebody  resists  him; 
numerous  people  controvert  him;  perhaps 
some  accuse  him  of  insincerity  or  dogma- 
tism. His  conceit  is  nettled  and  he 
becomes,  not  the  moderate  man,  but  an 
intense  one,  and  expresses  views  and  argu- 
ments that,  in  the  beginning,  he  could  not 
have  uttered.  Lawyers  and  bishops  may 
undergo  this  mental  change.  There  is  a 
common  belief  abroad  that,  once  committed 
on  a  subject,  a  man  cannot  change;  and  when 
we  see  one  candid  enough  to  sink  his  foolish 

37 


SOME  TANGENTS  OF  THE  EGO 

personal  feelings  and  adopt  new  views  that 
are  more  rational  to  him,  we  are  surprised. 
I  once  heard  a  brilliant  woman  express 
intense  disgust  for  a  relative  of  hers  who 
had  changed  his  politics.  She  declared  that 
his  father,  grandfather  and  great-grandfather 
had  all  belonged  to  the  same  party;  and 
that  now  the  foolish  man  had  gone  and 
changed  his  politics!  As  if  his  views  on 
the  subject  matter  could  possibly  have  more 
influence  upon  him  than  his  pride  of  family! 


38 


Ill 


The  tangents  of  the  ego  that  are  faults  are 
many  and  varied.  The  great  practical  ques- 
tion is  how  they  can  be  corrected.  Most  of 
them  are  simply  unfortunate  habits.  A  few 
stamp  their  possessors  with  a  questionable 
quality  of  genius  that  is  mostly  useless.  In 
the  main  they  are  misfortunes  that  anybody 
would  be  glad  to  be  rid  of;  as  every  one 
would  like  to  resemble  the  average  man  or 
woman — wholesome,  consistent,  balanced 
and  stable. 

The  remedy  is  mostly  with  the  individual 
himself;  others  may  help  him  to  know,  but 
not  to  apply  it.  He  must  change  himself, 
if  changed  he  becomes.  The  mechanism, 
as  already  hinted,  is  the  acquisition  of  a 
new  mental  mood,  a  new  emotion,  that 
becomes  the  ruling  power  in  the  life.  And 
a  new  emotion  does  rule,  provided  it  is  a 
strong  one,  and  the  delight  of  its  rule 
endures.  But  to  make  it  endure,  the  new 
way  must  be  practiced  incessantly,  till  it 
has  become  a  fixed  habit,  and  the  old  one  is 

39 


SOME  TANGENTS  OF  THE  EGO 

abandoned;  so  that  finally  the  new  way  is 
automatic  and  the  old  automatism  is  indis- 
tinct or  lost.  To  accomplish  this  means 
usually  a  long  period  of  watchfulness  and 
struggle,  although  the  metamorphosis  may 
be  rather  sudden. 

There  are  many  examples  of  egoism  thus 
changed.  The  whole  course  of  a  man's  life 
is  often  altered  quickly  and  radically  by 
religious  feeling.  The  process  starts  the 
moment  he  feels  that  he  is  a  sinner.  He 
excises  the  sin  he  knows  of,  whatever  he 
does  with  the  others,  and  a  revolution 
occurs  in  his  soul;  he  is  a  changed  man,  and 
may  so  continue  for  life.  A  new  human 
love,  an  infatuation  with  a  new  doctrine, 
even  a  fad  founded  on  next  to  nothing  or 
nothing,  may  start  as  radical  a  change  that 
shall  grow  to  be  an  automatism.  Often  the 
personality  of  another  is  a  potent  force. 
We  need  to  have  human  examples  to  copy, 
for  we  are  born  to  be  imitators  and  emula- 
tors. A  man  learns  he  has  a  tangent  that  is 
unlikable,  and  soon  finds  himself  admiring 
some  personality  that  is  free  from  this 
defect,  and  has  qualities  that  stand  in  sharp 
contrast  to  it.  This  personality  may  become 
his  model  and  a  mark  for  his  emulation. 
There  was  once  a  public  speaker  who  spoke 

40 


SOME  TANGENTS  OF  THE  EGO 

always  in  haste,  and  was  embarrassed,  for- 
getful and  easily  perturbed;  always  fearing 
before  he  spoke  that  he  would  not  do  well, 
and  afterward  that  he  had  done  poorly.  He 
was  transformed  on  listening  to  one  lecture 
by  Wendell  Phillips,  with  its  deliberate 
method,  its  superb  self-poise  and  air  of 
repose.  He  became  deliberate,  methodical 
and  imperturbable.  Then  he  could  think 
logically,  and  even  on  his  feet,  and  all  his 
.methods  both  in  public  and  private,  were 
more  or  less  colored  by  this  acquisition. 
The  house  might  have  fallen  about  his  ears 
and  he  would  not  have  quivered.  He  had 
adopted  a  new  guide,  was  under  the  spell 
of  a  new  mood,  and  it  had  become  the  gov- 
erning impulse  of  his  life. 

The  sequence  in  the  stages  of  the  amelio- 
ration is  uniform  and  interesting.  The  first 
step  is  the  discovery  of  the  fault;  next 
comes  the  knowledge  that  it  is  harmful  and 
hateful;  and  next  the  resolve  that  it  shall 
stop.  To  carry  out  this  resolution  it  is  a 
great  help  to  admire  a  superior  man  or 
woman  who  is  free  from  the  fault.  The 
history  of  General  Grant  has  helped  count- 
less men  to  habits  of  quiet  persistency, 
deliberation  and  silence.  The  final  step  of 
all   is  the  patient,    persistent    watchfulness 

41 


SOME  TANGENTS  OF  THE  EGO 

and  work  to  create  the  new  habit.  It 
is  usually  a  long  task,  with  a  great  re- 
ward. 

It  is  idle  to  say  that  conversion  on  the 
religious  side  can  remove  all  the  correctable 
defects  and  tangents  that  belong  to  us.  It 
often  does  abolish  some  that  we  have  or 
think  we  have.  One  may  genuinely  desire 
to  reform;  have  a  spirit  of  true  humility, 
and  try  to  see  what  his  offenses  are,  and 
succeed  to  some  degree.  But  his  judgment 
is  liable  to  be  warped  by  his  conceits  and 
self-depreciation.  And,  after  his  conver- 
sion, he  may  still  have  a  dozen  egoistic 
blemishes  that  hamper  his  career,  and  may 
develop  others  through  the  sanctification  he 
thinks  he  has  acquired. 

Moreover  a  liberal  minority  of  such  people 
accuse  themselves  of  faults  they  never  had, 
and  believe  they  are  going  straight  to  perdi- 
tion unless  they  are  somehow  cleansed  from 
these  imaginary  spots.  A  part  of  the  sins 
they  are  guilty  of  are  morbid  introspection, 
exaggeration  of  their  own  defects,  and  the 
conceit  of  humility.  Some  of  them  suffer 
for  years  from  the  pangs  of  conscience,  and 
practice  self-castigation  heroically,  and  a 
few  become  actually  insane.  Such  are  some 
of  the  casualties  that  come  in  the  great  strug- 

42 


SOiME  TANGENTS  OF  THE  EGO 

gle  of  life  to  attain  the  right  standard  in 
thought  and  conduct. 

The  one  aberrant  trait  that  is  helpful  in 
correcting  others,  and  rarely  harmful,  is 
extreme  unselfishness.  Providence  seems 
to  have  designed  this  as  an  antidote  to 
things  that  are  worse.  Its  possessors,  some 
of  them,  have  enough  worldly  wisdom  to 
keep  themselves  in  bread;  some,  however, 
give  away  all  they  have,  and  are  left  with 
nothing  but  their  unselfishness.  They  do 
good,  and  help  the  rest  of  us  to  put  away 
some  of  our  vanity  and  greed;  they  some- 
times make  us  ashamed  of  our  littleness,  and 
reveal  to  us  how  trifling  some  of  our  glitter- 
ing possessions  really  are.  Most  valuable 
of  all,  their  very  gentleness  and  fealty  to 
ideals  may  help  us  to  see  that  a  new  mood 
and  a  new  ideal  are  possible  even  for  us. 

Is  it  true,  then,  that  a  man  may  change 
his  mood  and  cease  from  being  troubled  by 
the  things  that  have  nagged  him  for  years? 
May  a  woman  stop  hating  people  whose 
faces,  voices  and  ways  have  been  a  night- 
mare to  her  since  she  can  remember?  And 
can  a  man  stop  short  in  his  lifelong  habit 
of  living  on  the  sweet  comfort  of  his  own 
self-measured  superiority?  A  woman  has, 
for  a  quarter  of  a  century,  been  persistent 

43 


SOME  TANGENTS  OF  THE  EGO 

and  automatic  in  her  efforts  to  conserve  her 
beauty,  and  has  lived  on  the  joy  and  fear  of 
it.  Can  she  change  now,  and  cease  to  care 
for  it,  or  care  little? 

All  these  things  are  possible,  and  may 
become  easy.  The  instant  a  man  sees  that 
the  things  that  have  ruffled  him  are  among 
the  inevitable  attributes  that  have  come  to 
certain  people  through  the  centuries,  half 
the  obstacles  are  gone.  If  then  he  can  learn 
how  foolish  it  is  to  bump  his  head  against 
a  rock,  and  to  consume  energy  over  irrita- 
tions that  are  avoidable,  he  will  find  the  rest 
of  the  task  easy.  He  will  learn  not  to  be 
nettled  by  the  jokes  that  are  planned  to  test 
him — he  will  stop  hating  the  jests,  and 
enjoy  them  with  the  jesters.  Above  all 
other  things,  this  kind  of  experience,  like 
the  fraternity  initiations  and  life  at  school, 
will  take  the  conceit  out  of  a  fellow,  if  any- 
thing on  earth  can. 

It  is  not  a  harder  lesson  for  a  man  to 
learn,  that  the  noise  of  the  children  in  the 
back  yard  is  music,  instead  of  a  thing  made 
to  plague  him.  He  would  not  growl  at  the 
soughing  of  the  wind  through  the  trees,  nor 
the  fitful  swish  of  the  rain  against  the  win- 
dow. He  will  be  happy,  and  feel  rested, 
when  he  can  be  as  calm  at  the  dash  of  the 

44 


SOME  TANGENTS  OF  THE  EGO 

water  if  it  comes  from  somebody's  garden 
hose. 

When  a  woman  learns  that  the  people  who 
have  crazed  her  grew  as  they  are  and  are  as 
fixed  in  their  ways  as  she  is;  that  they  are 
a  part  of  the  inevitable  variety  of  folk  that 
make  a  world;  when  she  sees  that  the  one 
avoidable  thing  that  has  hastened  her  age 
is  her  own  carking;  and  that  her  jealous 
enemy,  if  she  has  one,  hopes  her  worry 
may  go  on  and  deepen  her  wrinkles — then 
she  has  found  the  power  to  spare  herself, 
and  heap  triumphant  coals  on  the  heads  of 
the  spiteful.  And  the  task  is  not  hard  when 
undertaken  with  this  insight. 

A  man  in  the  night  throes  of  insomnia, 
chagrined  at  being  awake,  and  fretting  at 
his  annoyance,  drives  away  sleep  by  his  very 
perturbation.  Let  him  sincerely  resolve 
that  he  does  not  care  to  sleep,  but  enjoys 
being  awake,  determine  that  he  will  stay 
awake  all  night  and  think  pleasant  thoughts 
or  read  a  lazy  book,  and  in  ten  minutes  he 
is  fast  asleep!  He  has  made  himself  proof 
against  annoyance,  and  has  demolished  the 
scarecrow  of  his  slumber. 

But  these  changes  rarely  or  never  come  by 
mental  tension  or  by  hammer-strokes.  They 
come,    rather,   by  the    gentle   force    of   the 

45 


SOME  TANGENTS  OF  THE  EGO 

relaxation  and  tranquillity  of  a  new  philos- 
ophy, and  a  new  and  enticing  motive.  The 
instant  the  emotions  change,  and  we  bring 
ourselves  to  enjoy  the  new  ones  truly,  the 
restfulness  of  the  mood  steals  over  us,  and 
we  wonder  that  the  old  habits  ever  held  us 
so  firmly. 

The  rule  to  cultivate  tranquillity  and 
encourage  new  emotions,  and  be  proof 
against  irritations,  works  well  as  to  the 
ordinary  habits  of  life — the  usual  tangents  of 
the  ego.  But  as  to  the  melancholic  tangent 
it  refuses  to  work,  or  works  haltingly  and 
never  well.  The  courage-maker  is  sick,  per- 
haps because  the  digestion  is  poor;  and  ser- 
mons and  good  resolutions  may  do  some- 
thing, but  cannot  do  much.  It  avails  little 
to  say  to  a  despondent  man,  or  for  him  to 
say  to  himself:  "Brace  up  and  have  cour- 
age!" You  might,  in  most  cases,  as  well 
talk  to  the  sea.  The  mill  that  makes  the 
cheerfulness  is  clogged,  and  refuses  to  work. 
Some  other  help  must  be  discovered;  some 
other  way  must  be  found. 

Under  the  deepest  despondency  the  human 
mind  has  one  power  that  may  be  taken 
advantage  of  for  this  very  state,  namely,  its 
power  to  think  for  and  advise  others.  A 
man  feels  a  deep  sense  of  gloom  that,  to  his 

46 


SOME  TANGENTS  OF  THE  EGO 

automatic  thinking,  is  sure  to  be  ended  only 
with  death,  and  he  is  tempted  to  take  his 
life.  Let  him  even  try  to  do  this,  and  be 
interrupted  in  the  act  by  another  man,  who 
comes  to  ask  advice  for  his  melancholy,  and 
he  will  promptly  give  the  second  man  the 
good  counsel  he  was  himself  about  to  vio- 
late, namely,  that  the  world  only  seems 
dark,  and  that  if  he  will  wait  patiently  a 
little  while  the  clouds  will  pass  away;  that 
they  cannot  be  long-lived;  and  that  it  is  the 
worst  recklessness  to  give  way  to  a  tempor- 
ary feeling  of  gloom. 

One  step  toward  the  salvation  of  the  man 
with  the  blues  is  to  stop  and  think  what 
advice  he  would  give  another  who  should 
come  to  him  with  the  same  complaint;  then, 
having  got  the  advice  clear  in  his  mind,  to 
try  to  follow  it  himself.  The  effort  in 
behalf  of  the  other  will  help  him  to  save 
himself.  "What  would  I  advise  a  despair- 
ing soul?"  is  the  interrogative  formula  that 
every  victim  must  learn  by  heart;  must  say 
over  a  thousand  times,  and  until,  like  the 
jingle  of  a  seductive  rhyme,  he  cannot  drive 
it  out  of  his  head.  It  must  come  back  to 
him  again  and  again,  and  come  unbidden. 
And  its  coming  will  not  be  a  cause  of  grief 
and    deeper    despondency,  but  will  lighten 

47 


SOME  TANGENTS  OF  THE  EGO 

the  load  as  it  will  offer  the  promise  of  relief. 
For  every  time  the  man  takes  this  rule 
home  to  himself,  and  truly  considers  what 
his  advice  would  be,  he  then  and  there 
begins  to  follow  it,  and  lifts  his  head,  if  only 
a  little,  to  a  new  light. 

And  this  rule  is  not  hard,  it  does  not  belie 
any  of  the  facts  of  human  nature,  and  it  is 
wholesome  for  everyday  life  in  a  thousand 
ways.  After  all,  it  is  nothing  but  a  method 
— an  attempt  to  make  people  forget  their 
egoism  and  look  at  their  own  troubles 
impersonally,  a  profitable  thing  for  any  one 
to  do,  and  most  helpful  to  one  in  despair. 
For  if  such  an  one  looks  at  his  prospects 
through  the  spectacles  of  his  sombre  emo- 
tions, he  is  lost;  he  is  in  a  very  dungeon  of 
gloom,  without  a  ray  of  light.  His  only 
safety  is  to  take  himself  and  his  feelings  for 
the  moment  out  of  the  problem;  or,  rather, 
to  lift  himself  up  and  away  from  his  own 
personality  and  emotions,  and  look  down  at 
his  interests  in  a  speculative  manner.  And 
if  the  gloom  is  great,  almost  the  only  way 
for  him  to  do  this  is,  in  complete  sincerity, 
to  create  the  conditions  in  the  interest  of 
another  person,  and  to  regard  himself  as 
directing  another  and  a  hopeless  soul.  This 
vicarious  method  makes  the  struggle  of  the 

48 


X 


SOME  TANGENTS  OF  THE  EGO 

ascent  easier.  It  introduces  a  vantage 
ground,  a  resting  place,  like  an  intermediate 
note,  to  enable  one  to  step  up  with  ease  to 
a  tone  that  is  higher  and  more  certain. 

Beyond  this  there  is  always  left  to  us 
another  resource  of  some  consequence, 
namely,  to  look  and  act  cheerful,  and  thereby 
help  to  create  an  actual  feeling  of  cheer- 
fulness. Acts  do  in  a  measure  evoke  the 
feelings  that  normally  accompany  them. 
To  act  calmly  helps  to  a  mood  of  calmness; 
so  of  courage  and  cheerfulness. 

If  one  has  the  strength  and  self-control  to 
do  this,  he  is  sure  to  gain  at  least  a  little  in 
spirit,  and  begin  to  move  out  of  his  despond- 
ency. It  takes  a  superior  sort  of  stoicism 
to  hold  a  man  up  to  a  rule  of  this  kind,  but 
men  have  it  and  can  cultivate  it,  and  they 
ought  to  cultivate  it.  For,  as  a  force  in  life 
and  conduct,  it  is  a  saving  quality  of  grace. 


49 


The    Mind  for  a   Remedy 


The   Mind   for  a   Remedy 


Man's  mental  state  is  responsible  for  many 
of  his  sensations.  An  emotion  can  make 
him  happy  or  unhappy;  it  may  cause  him  to 
blush  or  blanch,  to  break  out  into  perspira- 
tion and  to  shake  with  fear;  it  may  fill  his 
mouth  with  saliva  or  dry  it  in  an  instant  and 
it  may  suddenly  stop  his  digestion.  It  is 
said  that  intense  emotion  can  turn  the 
hair  gray  in  a  few  hours.  It  may  cause  a 
sudden  intense  pain  in  the  head  or  else- 
where; may  make  the  pulse  irregular,  and 
the  heart  to  beat  with  such  violence  as  to 
rupture  a  cerebral  vessel;  and  it  may  cause 
death  by  the  sudden  giving  out  of  the  few 
remaining  muscular  fibres  of  a  degenerate 
heart. 

On  the  other  hand,  an  emotion  may  drive 
away  pain  and  discomfort,  indigestion  and 
sleeplessness,  and  turn  grief  into  joy,  and 
make  a  change  in  the  governing  impulse  to 
action  that  may  continue  through  life. 

Dislike  or  irritability  may  cause  one  to  be 
annoyed  by  trifles,  and  life  to  be  nagged  into 

53 


^     THE   MIND  FOR  A  REMEDY 

a  continuous  torture.  A  contrary  emotion 
may  beget  good  temper  in  the  midst  of  all 
the  cumulative  annoyances  of  life.  Emo- 
tion with  an  idiosyncrasy  or  a  weakness 
makes  many  of  the  forms  of  hysteria,  as 
cultivation  of  the  right  emotions  may  pre- 
vent these  symptoms. 

Right  emotions  are  sought  always,  and 
probably  by  everybody.  Everybody  would 
be  happy  if  he  could.  If  an  emotion  can 
drive  away  pain  and  increase  tranquillity,- 
every  one  who  knew  about  it  would  natu- 
rally cultivate  it.  Nobody  would  willingly 
seek  mental  states  that  give  him  pain  and 
indigestion,  unhappiness  and  insomnia. 

A  thousand  guide  posts  have  directed 
men  to  the  emotions  that  promise  peace  and 
freedom  from  suffering  and  discontent. 
Many  of  these  are  religious;  hundreds  of 
different  shades  of  faith,  and  with  all  sorts 
of  inspiration  and  philosophy.  The  range 
is  wide,  and  all  kinds  of  spirits  and  gods, 
and  one  God  and  Jesus  Christ,  are  invoked 
in  manifold  variations;  and  people  are  told 
that  by  embracing  this  or  that  particular 
form  they  shall  have  some  physical  or 
spiritual  advantage  not  given  to  the  rest  of 
the  world.  Some  religions  are  urged  upon 
unbelievers    for    the    purpose   of    spiritual 

54 


THE   MIND  FOR  A  REMEDY 

safety  after  death,  with  incidental  advan- 
tages in  this  life;  others,  like  one  of  the  lat- 
est, are  advocated  because  they  promise  to 
rid  the  body  of  disease  and  bring  happiness 
and  harmony  here — with  certainty  of  happi- 
ness in  the  hereafter;  and  all  because  God 
is  good  and  God  is  everything.  One 
teaches  that  disease  may  be  cured  by 
prayer;  another,  that  disease  is  an  imagi- 
nary thing  and  that  if  you  only  understand  it 
does  not  exist,  it  does  not;  still  another, 
that  the  laying-on  of  hands  or  some  weird 
motions  made  over  the  patient  will  cure. 
One  cult  says  that  the  human  mind  has  a 
chemical  quality  and  must  learn  to  attract 
the  desirable  thoughts  and  emotions,  and  to 
repel  those  of  an  opposite  sort,  as  chemical 
elements  do.  One  writes  of  the  "majesty 
of  calmness,"  another,  of  the  wonders  and 
the  power  of  relaxing  to  give  joy  and 
strength;  and  another  has  convinced  a  con- 
siderable company  that  the  great  enemies 
of  the  race  and  the  potent  makers  of  grief 
and  sickness  are  the  emotions  of  anger  and 
worry. 

There  can  be  no  doubt  of  the  value  of 
these  influences  for  relief  to  many  people  in 
various  states  of  physical  and  mental 
trouble.     They  have  by  their  own  testimony 

55 


THE   MIND   FOR  A  REMEDY 

received  help  and  strength  from  them. 
There  can  be  no  doubt  of  this  fact.  If  the 
help  has  come  through  the  imagination,  that 
is  an  explanation  of  the  method  and  does 
not  impeach  the  claim.  So  the  treatment 
of  the  sick  is  not  confined  to  medicines 
alone;  other  influences  are  quite  as  valu- 
able, even  indispensable.  People  often  do 
get  well  of  painful  disorders,  if  not  danger- 
ous ones,  by  the  influence  of  helpful  emo- 
tions. 

Probably  all  of  these  influences  have  some 
power,  and  for  different  classes  of  people 
different  values.  Some  of  the  measures  are 
applicable  to  one  person,  some  to  another, 
depending  on  their  respective  idiosyncrasies. 
That  the  measures  apply  at  all,  and  do  good 
in  some  cases,  is  a  lesson  that  scientific 
medicine  ought  not  to  lose.  It  must  be  con° 
fessed  that  in  the  main  physicians  have 
almost  wholly  failed  to  use  for  any  good 
purpose  these  surprising  influences. 

The  catalogue  is  a  long  one  of  the  condi- 
tions of  body  and  mind  in  which  these  influ- 
ences work.  It  includes  a  large  series  of 
aches  and  pains,  and  of  odd  sensations  like 
numbness  and  tingling,  sometimes  called 
paresthesia.  It  includes  some  faults  of  the 
functions  of  the  body  that  are  usually  sup- 

56 


THE   MIND  FOR  A  REMEDY 

posed  to  be  wholly  uninfluenced  by  mental 
"states  as,  for  example,  many  forms  of  bad 
digestion,  and  irregular  action  of  stomach 
and  intestines.  It  includes  a  wide  range  of 
mental  perturbations,  as  insomnia,  worry, 
anger,  brain  and  nerv'e  fatigue,  disturbed 
emotions,  hysteria  in  numerous  forms,  and 
all  that  combination  of  symptoms  known  as 
neurasthenia.  This  word  always  means  a 
worn-out  or  run-down  condition  of  the 
mechanism  of  the  brain  surface  (the  gray 
matter)  that  is  engaged  in  mental  attention, 
in  care  taking,  and  in  liking  or  disliking 
people  and  things.  Doubtless  the  brain 
and  spinal  cord  are  always  involved  to- 
gether in  these  cases,  but  the  brain  most. 
The  disorders  are  true  psycho-neuroses,  a 
term  that  covers  most  forms  of  so-called 
hysteria  and  neurasthenia. 

The  influences  that  I  have  named  work  for 
benefit  in  various  ways,  first  by  arousing  ex- 
pectation of  relief;  then  by  reducing  such 
emotions  as  wear  upon  the  nervous  suscep- 
tibility, as,  for  example,  worry,  anger,  sus- 
piciousness, fear,  jealousy,  pride  in  danger, 
anxiety  and  sense  of  care  and  duty,  and  the 
emotional  states  of  diffidence,  mental  ten- 
sion, and  nervous  touchiness.  These  bad 
emotions  are  often  overcome  and  displaced 

57 


THE   MIND  FOR  A  REMEDY 

by  new  and  better  ones,  such  as  hope,  faith, 
love,  aspiration,  serenity,  relaxation  and 
imperturbability.  These  help  one  to  endure 
without  friction  a  flood  of  trouble  and  care 
that  otherwise  would  be  unbearable. 

How  these  measures  may  be  practically 
applied  and  the  old  emotions  displaced  by 
the  new;  and  whether  to  any  degree  mys- 
tery or  deception  are  justifiable  in  general, 
and  to  be  fostered  for  either  party  (the  one 
who  needs  the  relief  or  the  one  who  tries  to 
give  it)  are  serious  questions  that  deserve 
the  best  study. 

In  some  cases,  and  for  some  people  it  is 
not  a  question  of  the  need  of  mystery  to 
accomplish  the  required  purpose,  for  that  is 
a  fore-known  certainty.  Many  people  never 
can  be  appealed  to  on  a  wholly  rational 
basis  for  any  emotional  effect;  they  cannot 
use  their  own  unmysterious  powers  for  their 
own  relief.  The  only  question  is  how  far 
scientific  caretakers  of  the  sick,  who  them- 
selves are  not  deluded  or  wool-blind,  shall 
foster  the  idea  of  mystery  and  perhaps 
supernatural  power  in  dealing  with  invalids, 
and  just  what  their  procedure  and  sequence 
of  action  ought  to  be. 

Our  ambition  always  must  be  for  an  un- 
worn-out thinking  machine  that  is  not  too 

58 


THE   MIND  FOR  A  REMEDY 

emotional;  this  is  the  goal,  and  that  gained, 
all  else  is  easy.  How  to  reach  it  is  a  prob- 
lem. In  all  cases  of  so  called  nervous  pros- 
tration the  chief  desideratum  must  be  (after 
or  with  restoration  of  bodily  functions)  to 
rest  the  brain  machinery  that  is  tired;  i.  e., 
change  the  trend  of  thought;  give  new 
scenes  and  occupations  and  stop  the  regular 
work.  But  this  is  not  enough;  we  must 
change  the  current  emotions  and  induce 
new  thoughts  not  connected  with  the  voca- 
tion or  the  things  that  have  worried  and 
worn  out  the  endurance.  This  last  measure 
is  the  most  potent  of  all  influences,  and  is 
usually  possible  of  realization.  Hope  and 
faith  can  take  the  place  of  despair  and 
doubt,  suspicion  and  melancholy.  Tran- 
quillity and  relaxation  can  come  instead  of 
incessant  tension,  apprehension  and  exalted 
alertness.  Imperturbability  may  stand 
instead  of  fret,  irritability,  diffidence  and 
fear;  and  benevolence  and  unselfishness, 
instead  of  hate,  envy  and  jealousy.  The 
difficulty  is  to  know  how  to  bring  these 
changes  to  people  of  all  sorts  of  mental 
peculiarities  and  crotchets,  as  well  as,  per- 
haps, of  moral  perversity.  When  the  trans- 
formation begins  we  discover  a  new  being. 
A   new  birth   in  thought  and   freedom   has 

59 


THE   MIND  FOR  A  REMEDY 

occurred.  The  change  manifestly  cannot 
come  to  all  people,  only  to  most  of  them  for 
whom  the  best  efforts  are  made  by  them- 
selves or  others.  There  are  at  least  three 
cardinal  forces  that  start  the  process.  They 
are: 

1.  The  power  of  the  victim  himself. 
This  is  in  the  few  instances  where  he  knows 
his  failings  and  changes  intelligently.  He 
knows  he  has  overworked  and  resolves  to 
rest;  he  has  fretted  too  much  and  has  been 
governed  by  ignoble  purposes,  and  resolves 
to  change,  and  does  it.  Such  people  are 
the  greatest  and  grandest  in  all  the  world. 

2.  The  help  of  others  who  know  better 
than  the  patient  what  his  failings  are  and 
who  point  the  way  in  a  rational  manner. 
These  others  are  the  friend,  the  doctor  and 
the  priest,  who  can  persuade  and  convince 
without  arousing  that  most  irresistible  of  ob- 
stacles—the notion  that  unpleasant  advice  is 
unfriendly. 

3.  Some  new  influence  brought  into  the 
mind  that  can  change  the  bad  emotional 
bent,  as  some  mystery  or  mysticism,  some 
novelty  or  humbug,  or  a  belief  in  the  power 
of  something  beyond  himself  on  which  the 
patient  leans  or  believes  he  leans. 

These    last,    except  when   believers    in    a 

60 


THE    MIND  FOR  A  REMEDY 

wholesome  religion  urge  a  reliance  on  divine 
power  to  help  one  to  lift  himself,  are 
usually  brought  to  the  patient  by  the 
psychic,  the  quack,  the  believer  in  strange 
things,  the  mesmerizer,  the  intentional  fakir, 
and  the  religious  doctrinaire  who  is  himself 
deluded.  And  the  doctrines  strike  people 
in  a  thousand  different  ways,  and  find  as 
many  shades  of  criticism,  doubt,  credulity 
and  blindness. 

Probably  the  mystery  cannot  be  dispensed 
with  for  all  people  at  all  times.  Some  must 
have  it  in  one  form  or  another,  and  it  is  not 
true  that  any  of  them  wish  to  be  humbugged; 
but  they  are  susceptible  to  influences  that 
come  in  the  guise  of  mystery  and  they  can- 
not help  it,  nor  learn  to  help  it  much.  And 
the  mystery  is  sure  to  come  in  one  shape  or 
another  to  susceptible  natures,  for  all  time. 
It  has  been  so  through  the  history  of  the 
race  and  there  is  no  ground  to  expect  that  it 
will  change  greatly.  Wonderful  effects 
from  mysterious  things,  like  secret  nostrums 
and  occult  influences,  will  continue  to  be 
recorded  hereafter  as  they  have  been  hereto- 
fore. 

The  fact  that  the  disorders  and  patients 
described  have  been  the  objects  of  charlatan- 
ry so  long,  is  no  reason  why  we  should  not, 

6i 


THE   MIND  FOR  A  REMEDY 

in  their  behalf,  resort  to  mental  effects  that 
are  possible  for  good,  and  that  are  founded 
in  the  physiology  of  the  brain  and  nervous 
system.  Indeed,  the  scandals  of  the  past 
are  a  sufficient  reason,  if  there  were  no 
other,  for  considering  this  subject  in  a  dis- 
passionate and  scientific  manner.  But  the 
pathetic  condition  of  a  large  class  of  nerv- 
ous patients  is  another  reason,  and  they 
deserve  the  best  thought  and  talent  of  stu- 
dents in  these  very  directions. 

As  to  the  cases  and  influences  I  have  re- 
ferred to;  and  to  all  cases  of  sickness  that 
are  at  all  chronic,  whatever  may  be  their 
degree  of  severity  or  their  peculiarity,  it  is 
clear  that  the  doctor  has  certain  very  posi- 
tive duties.     As  I  conceive  them,  they  are: 

1.  To  see  what  brain  and  nerve  powers 
and  functions  have  gone  wrong  or  are  out  of 
order,  as  shown  by  the  mental  and  nervous 
symptoms. 

2.  To  discover  what  functions  of  the  body 
are  wrong,  that  have  been  made  so  by  men- 
tal influences. 

3.  To  study  the  personal  qualities  of  indi- 
vidual patients  and  see  how  each  can  be 
affected  in  the  best  way  by  psychopathic 
influences. 

4.  To   apply,    with   care   and    discretion, 

62 


THE   MIND  FOR  A  REMEDY 

such  measures   as  are  found    necessary  for 
each  case. 

The  first  of  these  duties  it  would  seem 
possible  to  do  easily;  yet  it  is  not.  Doctors 
are  much  more  inclined  to  prescribe  drugs 
or  physical  means  for  the  supposed  disease 
that  they  guess  to  be  the  cause  of  the  symp- 
toms, than  to  even  seek  for  some  causation 
in  mental  or  emotional  conditions.  Indeed, 
as  we  study  the  sick,  we  too  often  forget  all 
about  the  physiology  of  the  nervous  system, 
and  especially  the  relation  of  the  more 
voluntary  to  the  more  involuntary  portions 
of  it.  If  we  would  only  try  to  know  what 
powers  and  functions  of  the  brain  are  going 
wrong,  we  could,  I  believe,  often  prevent 
insanity  from  occurring.  And  it  is  not 
difficult  when  we  study  a  patient  carefully, 
and  have  his  confidence,  to  know  whether 
his  emotional  and  mental  life  are  right  or 
wrong,  and  if  wrong  what  they  need  for  cor- 
rection. His  insomnia  is  produced  often  by 
some  annoying  emotions;  his  loss  of  mem- 
ory by  introspection  and  worry,  perhaps 
over  imaginary  bodily  ills;  his  lightning 
nervous  response  by  overwork  and  wrong 
emotional  attitude  toward  his  environment. 
So  of  many  other  mental  and  bodily  symp- 
toms.    The  greatest  art  of  the  doctor  is  to 

63 


THE   MIND  FOR  A  REMEDY 

gain  the  confidence  of  the  patient  so  that  he 
will  reveal  that  part  of  his  inner  life  which 
he  usually  hides  completely. 

As  to  the  second  duty,  to  see  if  physical 
functions  are  disturbed  by  mental  forces,  we 
almost  never  think  of  it.  It  does  not  occur 
to  us  that  a  pain  could  be  so  produced,  or 
indigestion  or  a  coated  tongue.  And  the 
suggestion  that  one  could  have  a  hemorrhage 
from  the  lungs  or  throat  from  the  effect  of 
emotion  seems  preposterous.  Yet  I  have 
known  beyond  a  peradventure  of  two  or 
three  such  cases.  Many  cases  of  indiges- 
tion are  made  worse,  if  not  produced,  by 
eating  in  a  state  of  mental  tension,  or  under 
depressing  emotions  of  the  class  that  are 
removable  by  other  emotions  invoked  to  dis- 
place them.  Dyspeptics  are  accused  of 
malingering  because  sometimes  they  can 
eat  with  impunity  articles  and  quantities  of 
food  that  usually  cause  them  acute  suffering. 
The  fact  is  that  with  the  right  emotions 
digestion  is  better;  with  the  usual  ones  it  is 
worse.  A  dinner  with  friends  and  good 
feeling,  and  without  cares  or  sense  of  haste, 
is  a  very  different  thing  from  bolting  a  little 
of  even  the  best  food  under  the  pressure  of 
business  worry. 

That,  with  many  persons,  a  pain  is  made 

64 


THE    MIND   FOR  A  REMEDY 

worse  to  their  consciousness  by  their  think- 
ing and  talking  about  it,  and  by  their 
friends  magnifying  it,  is  as  notorious  as  it  is 
that  the  pain  is  often  gone  the  moment  they 
can  ignore  it.  Yet  we  rarely  make  the 
smallest  suggestion  of  mental  influences  in 
this  class  of  cases.  We  seldom  ask  our- 
selves whether  a  pain  is  made  worse  by 
thinking  on  it,  and  if  we  do,  and  find  such 
is  the  case,  we  usually  scold  the  patient  or 
lose  interest  in  him  for  this  reason,  when  we 
ought  to  have  the  more  interest,  and  might 
convince  him  of  the  mental  element  and 
correct  it.  We  could  also  enlist  his  friends 
to  help  him  forget  the  pain,  which  is 
usually  the  reverse  of  what  they  do.  In- 
stead he  usually  gets  a  round  of  anodynes 
which  are  never  completely  effective,  while 
his  mind  grows  more  and  more  alive  to  its 
sufferings,  until  its  emotional  condition 
becomes  ripe  for  it  to  be  carried  away  into 
forgetfulness  of  the  pain  by  any  faith  rem- 
edy or  mental  legerdemain  that  may  be 
offered.  The  feeling  of  desperation  has 
been  reached  where  the  victim  will  grasp  at 
any  straw  of  hope.  A  promise  of  positive 
relief  is  the  greatest  boon  of  all,  and  that  is 
the  offer  of  the  new  remedy. 

That    the   cure    is   complete    in    so   many 

65 


THE   MIND   FOR  A  REMEDY 

cases  is  proof  that  there  are  a  great  many 
imaginary  and  functional  sufferers.  It  is 
proof  also  of  what  the  doctor  could  do  if  he 
would  try.  Serious  organic  diseases  do  not 
get  well  by  such  influences,  but  they  are  a 
minority  of  all  the  cases  of  sickness.  That 
as  a  rule  there  must  be  some  lessening  in  the 
intellectual  grasp  of  the  normal  relation  of 
things,  the  usual  sense  of  proportion,  when  a 
person  can  give  himself  over  to  such  faith  in 
mystery,  does  not  help  the  matter  nor 
excuse  us.  Moreover  there  are  exceptions 
to  this  rule  in  the  few  strong  minds  to  whom 
some  supposed  novel  phenomena  seem  inex- 
plicable save  on  the  theory  of  supernatural 
power;  and  they  ignore  their  logic  as  a  thing 
that  has  played  them  false.  The  claim  made 
by  some  writers  that  these  people  are  verg- 
ing toward  true  insanity  is  not  correct,  but 
is,  I  presume,  suggested  by  some  of  their 
own  fixed  theories  about  mental  action. 
Fixed  theories  more  than  our  logic  are  prone 
to  play  us  false. 

The  third  consideration  is  the  most  im- 
portant of  all  for  any  practical  application 
of  psychopathic  measures.  People  differ  so 
widely  that  the  same  course  cannot  be  pur- 
sued with  all.  It  is  true  that  most  of  the 
patients  who  come  to  us  in  need  of  these 

66 


THE   MIND   FOR  A  REMEDY 

remedies  ought  to  have  the  same,  or  nearly 
the  same,  management.  They  have  nearly 
all  had  too  many  cares  or  concerns  that  have 
worried  them  in  one  way  or  another.  These 
need  to  be  cut  down.  They  have  exhausted 
the  power  of  mental  attention  with  likes 
and  dislikes.  Their  irritability  has  become 
phenomenal,  and  their  nervous  equilibrium 
has  reached  the  last  limit  of  instability,  and 
so  the  explosions  of  hysteria  and  neuras- 
thenia come  easily.  This  function  of  the 
brain  requires  rest,  and  the  emotions  need 
especially  the  antidote  of  wholesome  in- 
difference long  applied,  and  removed  as  far 
as  possible  from  the  causes  that  usually  set 
them  in  motion.  This  means  that  neuras- 
thenic men  should  get  away  from  their  busi- 
ness cares  that  nag,  and  that  women  should 
drop  every  social  obligation  and  the 
demands  of  dress,  and  even  the  care  of  their 
own  children  for  long  periods,  and  get  out 
to  nature  and  a  little  way  back  toward  bar- 
barism. 

Many  of  them  have  worn  down  their 
cerebral  strength  by  anger  and  envy  and  jeal- 
ousy, and  need  a  new  pasture  of  good  fel- 
lowship and  peace  with  the  world.  To  this 
end  their  own  families  may  need  to  be  made 
over,  or  be  born  again;    for  they  have  often 

67 


THE   MIND  FOR  A  REMEDY 

helped  to  accentuate  every  fault.  Those 
that  have  suffered  long  have  suffered  more 
as  the  days  have  passed.  Too  much  atten- 
tion to  the  nerves  that  suffer  has  exalted 
their  capacity  to  cry  out.  All  such  ought  to 
be  taken  away  from  their  sensations  by  some 
powerful  influence  that  can  completely  en- 
gage the  mind  in  hope  and  attention,  and 
give  them  rest. 

Some  there  are  whose  power  of  objective 
attention  is  always  reduced  save  when  in 
absolute  health.  When  sick,  even  trivially, 
the  subjective  me  is  so  exalted  that  they 
magnify  their  symptoms  incessantly,  and 
fence  themselves  off  as  by  a  wall  from  the 
objective  world.  As  long  as  they  are  a 
particle  sick  nothing  will  help  them  but 
some  power  that  can  arouse  their  faith  and 
interest  to  rise  above  their  subjective  trifles. 
They  can  never  be  depended  on  very  far,  even 
when  well  and  able  to  forget  their  sensa- 
tions and  live  an  objective  life  of  usefulness; 
for  any  trifling  disorder,  fatigue  or  accident 
unsettles  them.  They  are  unsafe  to  send  on 
long  campaigns;  some  trifling  sensation  will 
make  them  retreat  in  a  hurry.  They  need 
to  be  dealt  with  carefully,  for  they  are 
always  lame  on  the  slightest  occasion.  And 
the  word  stoicism  is  not  in  their  vocabulary. 

68 


THE   MIND  FOR  A  REMEDY 

Then  those  with  an  abnormal  tendency 
to  psycho-neuroses  (the  hysterical  constitu- 
tion) are  always  troublesome,  for  their  emo- 
tional natures  are  powder  magazines  ready 
to  explode  if  they  are  only  jostled.  They 
need  the  same  dose  of  rest  from  their  usual 
emotions,  and  to  have  new  and  more  whole- 
some ones  introduced  into  their  lives.  They 
are  constantly  in  the  condition  of  a  normal 
person  who  has  been  nervously  overworked; 
their  usual  state  is  one  of  neurasthenia  and 
they  should  be  so  managed,  and  large  nerv- 
ous tasks  should  never  be  expected  of  them. 
They  require  more  nerve  rest,  and  more  pro- 
tection by  good  emotions  from  bad  ones 
than  their  fellows,  and  they  ought  to  be 
spared  the  severer  tests  of  common  life. 
They  need  to  travel  in  protected  paths  all 
their  days.  Moreover,  many  such  need  a 
service  that  is  rarely  done  for  them,  namely, 
to  be  shown  how  they  are  constantly  living 
with  emotions  that,  being  of  the  wholesome 
kind,  are  excessive  in  degree,  or  with  those 
that  are  altogether  wrong.  Standing  in  the 
way  of  this  service  is  a  peculiar  secretive- 
ness  as  to  their  emotional  lives,  which 
usually  prevents  their  nearest  friends  from 
ever  sounding  their  depths.  They  them- 
selves,   least    of  all,   know    and  can    study 

69 


THE   MIND  FOR  A  REMEDY 

dispassionately  their  emotional  lives,  and 
their  own  families  and  fellows,  instead 
of  helping,  usually  aggravate  their  mental 
warping. 

To  apply  the  right  remedy  in  each  case 
successfully  is  impossible.  The  most  we 
should  expect  is  partial  success,  for  the 
mental  twists  of  the  patients  are  so  varied, 
as  well  as  the  degrees  of  tact  we  can  use, 
that  numerous  misfits  must  occur.  More- 
over, it  will  be  said  that  the  prescriptions 
are  impossible;  that  cares  and  worries  can- 
not be  laid  aside;  that  one  cannot  forget  his 
personal  griefs  and  mortifications  or  change 
the  emotional  current  of  his  life.  But  there 
are  thousands  of  people  who  have  done  this 
very  thing  when  absorbed  with  some  new 
thought  or  fad  or  faith;  and  some  have  been 
able  to  do  it  by  the  power  of  their  own  com- 
mon sense  applied  to  themselves.  They  do 
not  put  aside  their  cares  and  griefs  so  much 
as  they  see  the  adjustment  of  them  to  the 
rest  of  the  universe,  and  discover  what  an 
amount  of  needless  worry  is  given  to  the 
things  of  a  day,  and  see  how  their  journeys 
are  made  easier  by  repressing  certain  emo- 
tions and  encouraging  others. 

Lack  of  wisdom  on  the  part  of  the  doctor 
causes  many  failures.     Tell  a  man  that  he 

70 


THE    MIND   FOR  A  REMEDY 

imagines  half  his  ills,  and  he  may  refuse  to 
speak  to  you  again.  But  tell  him  first  that 
the  mind  of  everyone  affects  the  body 
always;  then  that  he  must  be  like  other 
people;  then  ask  him  seriously  to  think  if  it 
is  not  possible  for  him  to  be  dwelling  too 
much  on  his  ailment— and  you  have  perhaps 
started  him  amicably  in  the  right  direction. 
To  a  few  it  is  safe  to  be  blunt  and  severe, 
and  to  tell  them  of  the  mental  element  in 
their  sickness,  but  it  is  rather  a  dangerous 
experiment,  so  fixed  are  sufferers  in  the 
reality  of  their  woes.  Any  hint  of  auto-> 
exaltation  of  woe  or  pain  is  generally  taken 
as  proof  of  unfriendliness  and  lack  of  sym- 
pathy. When  such  hints  are  taken  agree- 
ably the  benefit  is  prompt. 

Tell  a  man  that  his  fret  at  being  awake 
keeps  him  from  sleeping,  and  you  have 
hardly  helped  him  at  all.  But  show  him 
how  an  honest  desire  to  keep  awake  all 
night  will  put  the  mind  into  a  mood  of  such 
tranquillity  that  the  spirit  of  sleep  will  come 
without  obstacle,  and  you  have  destroyed 
his  insomnia  and  transfigured  his  soul.  Tell 
a  woman  not  to  fret  at  the  ways  of  others, 
and  you  are  talking  to  the  sea,  but  show  her 
how  these  annoying  ways  are  inevitably 
born   to   some   people,    and   that    they   are 

71 


THE    MIND   FOR  A  REMEDY 

ethnic  curiosities  to  be  amused  at,  and  you 
have  done  her  a  service. 

It  is  easy  to  deal  with  the  patient  who  is 
so  sensible  that  he  can  change  his  mental 
tendencies.  You  have  only  to  show  him 
that  his  emotional  strain  and  his  nervous 
agitation  are  too  great,  and  he  becomes 
tranquil  and  imperturbable.  But  such 
people  are  the  rarest  exceptions  to  the  rule. 
More  there  are  who  are  so  constituted  that 
they  must  have  some  mystery  or  quality  of 
the  unknowable  to  fix  their  faith  on,  in 
order  to  have  any  mental  benefit.  It  is 
difficult  to  deal  with  these  on  the  basis  of 
perfect  candor.  To  be  frank  and  unmyste- 
rious  is  to  fail  to  do  them  good.  Your 
advice  is  too  common  and  simple. 

Is  deception  justifiable  in  such  cases? 
The  answer  must  be  yes  and  no.  The 
minds  of  the  sick  are  many  times  distinctly 
abnormal,  we  cannot  theoretically  regard 
them  as  ever  quite  normal;  and  they  are  not 
capable  of  reasoning  about  their  interests 
exactly  like  themselves  in  health.  But 
many  are  at  times  more  capable  than  the 
average  of  well  people,  and  it  is  a  great 
problem  to  deal  with  each  of  them.  It  is 
never  right  to  be  unfair  to  the  best  interests 
of  the  sick.     But  it  is  not  unfair  to  leave 

72 


THE   MIND   FOR  A  REMEDY 

them  in  the  dark  as  to  the  abstruse  things 
of  cerebral  physiology  that  no  man  under- 
stands completely.  The  plan  of  trying  to 
explain  everything  to  the  patient  has  its 
drawbacks.  It  is  never  done  anyway,  for 
half  the  things  the  doctor  tries  to  explain  he 
only  partly  understands  himself,  and  it  is 
better  for  the  patient's  mind  in  most  cases 
to  be  either  dealt  with  dogmatically  (usually 
involving  a  degree  of  laudable  deception, 
because  the  doctor  pretends  to  know  some- 
thing he  does  not),  or  be  left  in  some 
admitted  doubt  and  uncertainty.  This 
latter  gives  room  for  faith,  which  is  whole- 
some. 

Where  the  psychological  element  is 
strong  I  think  we  do  wrong  not  to  try  to 
create  faith  and  hope  that  may  help. 
Whether  this  is  done  by  the  positiveness  of 
the  doctor  or  by  something  else  matters 
little,  as  long  as  it  is  done.  If  religion  can 
make  one  happy  and  hopeful,  it  is  one  of 
the  natural  rights  of  the  sick  man  to  have 
it;  and  if  something  that  stands  for  it  can  in 
any  way  relieve  cares  and  give  rest  of  soul 
(which  means  emotional  rest),  it  must  not 
be  withheld.  No  physician  can  justify  his 
neglect  of  pyschologic  influences  that  give 
hope,    on   the  ground  of   his   efforts  to  be 

73 


THE   MIND  FOR  A  REMEDY 

scientific,  when  he  considers  his  own  short- 
comings in  every  sort  of  knowledge. 

A  patient  who  has  perhaps  suffered  long 
or  who  is  impatient,  asks  for  his  doctor's 
views  about  some  one  of  the  insubstantial 
cults,  and  the  doctor  is  troubled  to  know 
what  he  shall  reply  that  will  comport  with 
his  duty  to  be  helpful  to  the  sick,  and  not 
strain  his  common  sense  or  self-respect. 
His  temptation  is  to  say  that  it  is  all  non- 
sense; that  only  weak-minded  people  take 
it  up;  that  any  good  effects  from  it  are 
imaginary;  and  that  it  tends  toward  mental 
unbalancing.  Each  of  these  declarations 
expresses  a  partial  truth,  yet  they  should 
not  be  said  to  the  patient.  To  say  them 
might  constructively  discredit  a  number  of 
other  religious  beliefs,  some  of  which  the 
doctor  himself  may  have  great  respect  for. 
Besides,  they  do  not  express  the  exact  truth. 

The  time  comes  in  the  mental  experience 
of  some  people  when  they  are  tired  of  think- 
ing (if  they  do  think)  and  depending  upon 
the  science  of  things  that  is  the  common 
knowledge  of  the  world.  They  seem  to 
need  something  novel  that  does  not  require 
thinking,  only  believing.  And  oftentimes 
the  most  unreasonable  thing  takes  best;  the 
greater  the  jump  from  a  basis  of  reason  into 

74 


THE   MIND  FOR  A  REMEDY 

chaos,  the  easier  it  is  for  some  people  to 
make  it.  Ought  physicians  wholly  to  dis- 
courage such  things  because  the  concepts 
believed  are  unscientific  and  absurd?  This 
seems  natural,  but  we  must  remember  that 
the  parts  of  all  religions  which  people  take 
on  faith  are  inexplicable  by  any  of  our 
scientific  formulas.  Moreover  nearly  all 
scientific  men  have  had  some  religious  be- 
liefs no  more  justified  on  logical  grounds 
than  the  non-existence  of  matter,  or  some  of 
the  equally  absurd  theories  of  our  friends 
whose  sanity  we  are  tempted  to  impeach. 
And  it  is  a  psychologic  fact  that  some- 
how such  unreasoning  faith  helps  to  tran- 
quillity of  soul,  and  tends  rather  to  good 
conduct  among  men,  and  this  is  one  of  the 
several  compensations. 

Why  not  be  entirely  truthful  as  well  as 
candid  with  such  inquiring  people?  We 
might  then  say  this,  and  say  it  kindly:  If 
you  have  reached  a  point  where  you  must 
have  something  more  than  you  now  possess 
to  pin  your  faith  to,  this  new  doctrine  may 
serve.  If  you  are  so  constituted  that  you 
cannot  make  a  haven  of  mental  rest  along 
the  well-known  laws  of  brain  action  but 
must  have  something  occult  or  mysterious 
to  lean  upon,  this  new  belief  may  help.     If 

75 


THE    MIND   FOR  A  REMEDY 

you  are  ready  to  deny  the  laws  of  nature  as 
to  your  own  body,  while  you  rely  on  them 
in  your  business  and  money-making,  this 
new  thing  is  probably  what  you  are  looking 
for.  If  you  can  put  aside  your  scruples 
about  the  common  knowledge  of  all  time, 
and  cease  to  stickle  for  it,  and  give  yourself 
unreasoningly  to  this  new  doctrine,  it  will 
probably  give  you  mental  comfort.  Then 
the  ridicule  of  the  world  of  science  that 
insists  on  the  existence  of  matter,  as  well 
as  that  of  the  believers  in  the  older  religions 
will,  by  its  very  boon  of  martyrdom,  make 
it  easier  for  you  to  believe  and  bear  it  all 
with  sweet  temper. 


The  cerebral  wear  and  tear  of  our  extreme 
civilization  leads  to  many  cases  of  neuras- 
thenia and  general  uselessness,  and  to  many 
sorts  of  hysteria  and  insanity.  The  medical 
profession  and  all  thoughtful  people  alike 
ought  to  do  something  to  lessen  this  for  the 
hampered  people  who  go  about  their  busi- 
ness from  day  to  day,  and  try  to  keep  well, 
or  pretend  they  are  well.  This  service  may, 
I  believe,  be  done  if  we  will  study  the  sub- 
ject with  something  of  the  enthusiasm  with 
which  we  have   pursued   the  microbes,  and 

76 


THE   MIND  FOR  A  REMEDY 

not    ignore    the   influences  that  are  wholly 
mental. 

It  is  evident  that  the  remedy  lies  either 
in  the  direction  of  lessening  the  load  or  in- 
creasing the  cerebral  capacity  to  bear  it. 
There  is  small  chance  of  increasing  the 
power;  a  thousand  years  hence  this  may 
come  to  be  done,  perhaps  by  the  process  of 
development  and  the  survival  of  the  fittest 
through  the  centuries.  At  present  the 
power  of  mental  endurance,  other  things 
being  equal,  is  substantially  fixed  for  every 
person.  It  may  be  increased  by  various 
aids  for  brief  periods  only.  As  other  things 
are  usually  unequal  it  can  generally  be 
more  economically  used  than  it  is,  and  this, 
for  the  better  business  of  life,  is  tantamount 
to  increasing  it  somewhat.  To  lighten  the 
load  should  be  our  aim,  for  the  load  is  too 
heavy  now,  especially  in  the  refined  and 
forceful  society  of  America. 

How  to  do  this  is  the  enigma.  It  is 
easy  to  say  we  will  begin  by  cultivating  the 
better  emotions  and  reducing  the  wearing 
ones,  and  by  cutting  down  the  needless  bur- 
dens. But  we  have  religions  and  ethics  and 
philosophy,  and  through  the  centuries  have 
been  taught  to  keep  the  good  emotions  and 
discard    the   bad    ones,    and    to    put   away 


THE    MIND  FOR  A  REMEDY 

foolishness.  And,  notwithstanding  all  our 
good  precepts  and  some  good  examples,  we 
have  got  into  the  bad  ways  of  the  present 
time.  We  must,  evidently,  be  more  specific 
as  well  as  more  radical  in  our  measures.  If 
any  great  good  is  done  the  remedies  must  be 
fundamental,  and  far-reaching  in  their 
effects;  not  a  few  must  be  influenced,  but 
many,  or  no  improvement  will  come  to  the 
community  as  a  whole.  But  we  ought  to 
help  the  few,  if  we  cannot  reach  the  multi- 
tude. 

A  certain  few  cardinal  things  are  appar- 
ently necessary  to  be  done  in  the  care  and 
culture  of  the  people,  and  they  are  mental 
and  moral  mostly. 

1.  We  must  lessen  the  emotional  atten- 
tions to  infants.  These  wear  out  the  brain 
energy  and  produce  erethism  that  may  last 
through  life.  Almost  any  infant  can,  in 
three  months,  be  developed  into  an  auto- 
crat, attempting  to  rule  his  world;  and  many 
of  them  have,  before  the  end  of  their  first 
year,  true  neurasthenia  resulting  from  these 
influences. 

2.  As  far  as  possible  we  ought  to  let  the 
children  alone,  and  stop  the  common  inces- 
sant effort  to  entertain  them.  This  effort 
continues  the  harmful  effects  of  too  much 

78 


THE    MIND  FOR  A  REMEDY 

emotional  attention  in  infancy.  Let  them 
entertain  themselves;  this  will  develop 
their  minds  and  rest  their  emotions.  We 
ought  to  observe  them,  with  their  knowl- 
edge, and  talk  about  them  in  their  presence 
less.  We  do  this  now  so  much  as  to  pro- 
v^oke  a  series  of  most  vicious  emotions  that 
grow  into  bad  life  habits.  Fairy  tales  and 
fairy  talk  are  unwholesome  to  most  of 
them.  The  average  child  already  has  too 
much  imagination;  it  is  a  beautiful  thing 
but  it  is  not  necessary  to  increase  it. 

Such  rules  for  infants  and  children  en- 
counter many  difficulties.  Two  motives 
actuate  parents  and  children  alike.  The 
first  is  to  see  that  the  children  are  happy 
and  pleasing  here  and  now.  The  reflex  effect 
on  their  elders  is  pleasant;  we  like  a  happy 
child,  and  like  to  make  a  child  happy. 
Thus  we  and  the  child  conspire  to  the  same 
end.  The  second  motive  is  to  make  sure 
that,  if  possible,  the  career  of  the  child 
shall  be  long  and  successful.  Both  emo- 
tions are  for  the  good  of  the  rising  life  as  we 
understand  it,  the  one  for  the  now,  and  the 
other  for  the  future.  Is  it  any  wonder  that 
we  should  generally  sacrifice  the  future  for 
the  present?  The  child  is  incapable  of  fore- 
going a  present  pleasure  for  a  future  good, 

79 


THE   MIND  FOR  A  REMEDY 

and  the  parents  are  too  ready  to  agree  not 
to  count  this  day's  indulgence,  even  when 
they  know  its  ulterior  effect  is  bad.  A 
mother  carries  her  baby  in  her  arms  a  long 
time  to  get  it  to  sleep  because  it  likes  to  be 
carried  and  refuses  to  go  to  sleep  in  its 
bed.  She  says  the  child  will  not  go  to 
sleep  otherwise,  but  if  she  reflects  she 
knows  this  to  be  a  tender-hearted  fiction. 
Her  fault  is  lack  of  courage  to  break  the 
habit.  As  the  child  grows  older  and  be- 
gins to  acquire  ways  that  she  fears  may 
make  him  inelegant  or  impolite  she  has  no 
hesitation  in  working  for  his  future,  and 
she  will  drill  him  by  the  hour  and  worry 
by  the  day  about  his  manners  (that  at  fifteen 
he  would  spontaneously  correct),  and  let 
him  go  on  with  nervous  injuries  that  will 
last  him  through  life.  Parents  are  shocked 
if  their  boys  smoke  cigarettes,  but  they  have 
allowed  habits  of  the  nervous  system  from 
babyhood  up  that  are  even  worse  for  the 
future  of  a  boy  than  smoking  cigarettes  in 
his  teens.  Parents  who  have  perpetually 
entertained,  coddled,  and  diverted  their 
children,  who  have  jumped  to  their  call  as 
to  the  command  of  a  superior  being,  are  by 
logic  and  nature  estopped  from  objecting  to 
cigarettes,  coffee,  wine  or  late  hours,  when 

80 


THE   MIND  FOR  A  RExMEDY 

the  children  pass  into  youth,  and  would  still 
gratify  their  desires  for  all  sorts  of  stimulat- 
ing amusements.  None  of  these  sins 
against  nature  is  so  great  as  those  that  have 
been  earlier  fostered  and  encouraged.  In- 
deed, had  the  earlier  ones  never  been 
committed,  many  of  these  later  indulgences 
would  not  be  sought.  The  exaltation  of 
nerve  centers,  born  of  vicious  excitement  in 
childhood  and  continued  in  years  of  habits, 
cannot  be  ignored  in  later  life. 

Parents  plead  that  their  children  ought  to 
be  obedient  and  self-denying  as  to  indul- 
gences that  harm,  because  they,  the  parents, 
have  been  good  to  them  in  their  infancy  and 
childhood,  have  made  pleasures  for  them, 
and  denied  them  little  or  nothing  of  joy. 
This  is  the  very  gist  of  the  error.  If  the 
emotional  propensities  of  the  children  had 
received  as  much  tranquil  rest  as  their 
muscles,  their  brains  would  have  grown 
up  with  more  normal  demands  and  with 
better  resisting  power. 

3.  We  ought  to  stop  making  young  ladies 
and  gentlemen  out  of  children.  To  push 
them  into  responsible  social  life,  as  early  as 
is  the  rule  in  the  best  social  stratum,  is  to 
develop  emotions  and  cares,  and  subject 
them  to  tests  and  temptations  that  ought  to 

81 


THE   MIND  FOR  A  REiMEDY 

be  postponed  for  years.  And  the  only 
justification  we  have  for  it  is  our  and  their 
unwholesome  pleasure  in  it  all,  and  their 
hoped-for  escape  from  diffidence  later. 
The  truth  is  that  for  many  of  them  the  diffi- 
dence is  an  advantage,  and  ought  to  be  en- 
couraged rather  than  otherwise. 

4.  We  ought  to  minify  the  emotional 
struggles  at  school  as  far  as  possible.  The 
strife  for  supremacy,  the  fear  of  failure,  the 
envy  and  jealousy  of  others,  constitute  one 
of  the  most  wearing  influences  on  the  brains 
of  the  young.  Not  all,  by  any  means,  but 
many  of  the  school  children  suffer  in  this 
way.  It  is  a  duty  to  find  out  the  ones  being 
most  harmed,  and  protect  their  nervous 
lives  if  possible. 

5.  An  increase  of  the  outdoor,  athletic 
life  of  the  people  as  a  whole  would  be  one 
of  the  greatest  gains  of  all.  Indoor  life 
keeps  us  below  the  par  physiologic,  and 
to  raise  the  standard  of  the  system  as  a 
whole  of  course  helps  the  brain. 

6.  To  reduce  and  repress  the  unhappy 
emotions  that  are  engendered  by  the  strug- 
gle to  shine  in  society  and  in  business,  is 
one  of  the  most  urgent  needs,  and  hardest 
services  to  render.  These  emotions  are 
envy,  jealousy,  fear  of  failure,  and  sense  of 

82 


THE   MIND  FOR  A  REMEDY 

danger  to  our  pride,  all  of  which  are  wear- 
ing and  depressing.  This  is  the  school  ex- 
perience carried  into  adult  life;  and  with  all 
its  ramifications  it  does  incalculable  harm 
to  the  cerebral  resisting  power.  To  reduce 
the  struggle  itself  as  well  as  its  bad  emo- 
tions is  quite  as  important.  This  ardor  to 
do  the  duties  that  society  and  business  seem 
to  impose  on  us  (and  beyond  the  getting  of 
bread)  is  a  large  part  of  the  cause  of  the 
nervous  overwork  among  men  and  women. 
When  a  woman  has  neurasthenia  from  so- 
called  nervous  overdoing,  the  chances  are 
six  in  ten  that  the  excess  of  work  was  done 
in  response  to  a  demand  of  some  sort  of 
social  tyranny,  and  was  thus  by  the  highest 
ethics  unnecessary.  The  same  truth  obtains 
with  men  only  to  a  slightly  less  degree. 

7.  Less  dress-parade  in  our  lives  is  neces- 
sary. Reduce  the  everlasting  dressing  of 
our  bodies,  houses,  tables  and  equipages! 
It  all  becomes  a  bug-bear  to  the  tired-out 
brain,  and  it  tires  the  brain.  It  is  what 
makes  women  feel  like  going  crazy  when 
they  think  of  packing  their  trunks  for  a  trip 
to  a  fashionable  resort,  and  it  makes  some 
of  them  really  crazy.  Such  parade  is  a  silly 
demand  that  our  conceit  and  envy  make 
upon  us,  to  the  worry  of  the  tired  brains, 

83 


THE   MIND  FOR  A  REMEDY 

and  with  the  paltriest  return  in  life's  recom- 
pense. 

8.  It  is  merely  a  truism  to  say  that  people 
who  are  carrying  mind  and  body  loads  that 
are  too  heavy  should  have  them  lightened. 
If  the  load  is  apparently  necessary  and  free 
from  the  vice  of  bad  emotions,  the  rest  is 
as  truly  necessary.  Rest  and  change  are  de- 
manded. These  influences  shift  the  bear- 
ings; take  off  the  pressure  from  parts  and 
powers  that  are  tired,  and  put  into  exercise 
faculties  that  have  been  dormant,  so  that 
the  man  as  a  whole  is  brought  up,  his  brain 
and  body  are  refreshed,  and  mental  wreck  is 
fought  off. 

The  influences  that  I  have  condemned  are 
what  in  large  measure  make  the  apparently 
inevitable  revolutions  of  the  wheel  of  Amer- 
ican society.  It  is  a  spectacle  that  the  old 
world  has  furnished,  only  in  a  different 
degree,  again  and  again.  Many  eminent  and 
resourceful  families  eventually  fall  behind  in 
the  greater  world  influences,  while  their 
places  are  taken  by  people  who  have  come 
up  from  humbler  beginnings.  The  rise  to 
power  of  these  is  due  to  the  fact  that  they 
have  suffered  less  injury  from  the  emotions 
that  grind  and  wear  out  the  nerve  force. 
They  have    lived    simpler    lives    nearer   to 

84 


THE   MIND  FOR  A  REMEDY 

nature,  and  have  been  moved  by  ambitions 
that  are  less  carking  and  unwholesome. 

This  continual  revolution  of  the  wheel  is 
self-acting  and  wholly  conservative  for  man- 
kind. The  race  and  company  fit  to  com- 
mand usually,  in  the  long  run,  come  up  to 
power.  The  lessening  of  grasp  due  to  the 
dissipations  incident  to  the  use  of  power — 
the  miscalled  rewards  of  power — causes  its 
victims  to  drop  behind  in  the  struggle  and 
give  place  to  those  not  handicapped  by  such 
influences.  And  the  wheel  promises  to  go 
on  revolving  as,  and  wherever,  this  de- 
bauchery of  resources  occurs,  and  nobody 
can  deny  that  the  struggle  is  fair,  and  the 
verdict  world-wise. 


85 


The   Etiology   of    Lying 


The   Etiology   of  Lying 


We  all  live  to  some  degree  in  an  atmos- 
phere of  the  unreal.  Some  of  us  live  most 
of  the  time  in  such  a  realm.  We  love  fic- 
tion, tell  stories,  and  build  air  castles  with 
something  of  the  facility  with  which  we 
breathe  and  walk  and  eat.  Children  begin 
to  show  this  tendency  just  beyond  babyhood, 
and  their  elders  accentuate  it  by  inventing  fic- 
tions for  them  that  develop  as  they  are  told. 
The  tendency,  in  some  measure,  creeps  into 
all  the  affairs  of  our  daily  lives.  In  mental 
equation  and  view-point  each  man  differs  a 
little  from  every  other,  and  so  they  see  and 
tell  things  differently.  Rarely  do  two  seem 
able  to  tell  a  thing  in  one  and  the  same  way. 
Note  the  differing  court  testimony  of  a 
dozen  witnesses  about  an  occurrence  which 
they  have  observed  together.  If  they  are 
prevented  from  hearing  each  others'  evi- 
dence, probably  no  two  will  tell  exactly  the 
same  story.  Inharmony,  inaccuracy  and 
untruth  are  about  us  always.  If  the  un- 
truths  happen  to  be  specially  offensive  to 

89 


THE  ETIOLOGY  OF  LYING 

us,  and  if  we  use  the  Saxon  speech,  we  are 
apt  to  call  some  of  them  lies. 

The  propensity  to  get  things  wrong  is  so 
common  that  we  are  forced  to  admit  it  as  a 
natural  bent  of  human  kind.  It  would  be 
harsh  to  say  that  all  people  have  a  propen- 
sity for  lying;  inaccuracy,  prevarication 
and  exaggeration  are  gentler  terms  and 
quite  as  true.  Yet  it  cannot  be  that  most 
of  us  prefer  to  be  inaccurate  or  untruthful. 
The  conclusion  is  irresistible  that,  millions 
of  times,  men  lie  without  being  able  to  help 
it,  even  if  they  know  it.  And  it  is  prob- 
ably true  that  as  to  most  of  our  errors  we 
never  even  discover  them. 

The  varying  statements  of  a  given  fact  by 
different  people  may  often  be  set  down  to 
dissimilar  estimates  of  the  same  data.  But 
we  cannot  always  justify  this  charitableness, 
for  some  of  the  variations  are  nothing  but 
plain  lying.  Not  even  the  mental  warping 
due  to  innate  human  selfishness  will  explain 
some  of  the  falsehoods  about  all  sorts  of 
things.  Many  of  them  seem  calculated  to 
help  the  one  who  tells  them,  but  many 
appear  to  be  wholly  undesigned  and  erratic. 
These  are  the  lies  said  to  be  made  out  of 
whole  cloth,  and  for  which  the  truth  would 
any  time  do  better. 

90 


THE  ETIOLOGY  OF  LYING 

Just  a  plain  propensity  for  lying,  prompted 
or  not  by  the  emotions  of  hate,  envy  and 
jealousy — all  differing  attributes  of  egoism 
— may  explain  some  of  these  instances.  But 
to  charge  them  all  to  such  mental  or  moral 
qualities  would  be  to  condemn  the  race  to  a 
deeper  degradation  than  it  ought  to  deserve, 
and,  I  believe,  deeper  than  it  does  deserve. 

If  we  are  normally  prone  to  prevarication 
and  inaccuracy  there  must  be  some  logical 
explanation  of  it,  or  a  part  of  it,  in  the  con- 
stitution of  the  human  mind  or  in  man's 
environing  influences  or  both  together.  And 
that  explanation  we  ought  to  find,  if  we  can. 

If  it  shall  be  found  that  many  of  our 
offences  are  unavoidable,  then,  as  to  these 
at  least,  the  most  opprobrious  epithet  flies 
wide  of  us.  They  are  foibles  rather  than 
sins,  and  the  word  lying  will  have  to  be  cur- 
tailed in  meaning.  But  it  ought  never  to 
cease  to  be  applied  to  those  cases  of  wilful 
mis-statement  begotten  of  selfishness  or 
jealousy  or  hate.  Nor,  as  applied  to  these 
acts,  ought  it.  ever  to  be  mollified  in  its 
severity.  They  are  so  awful  in  their  effects, 
so  wicked  in  their  aims,  and  so  inexcusable, 
that  they  will  continue  lies  in  the  most  offen- 
sive sense.  But  if  some  of  our  falsehoods  are 
found  on  trial   to  be  unwitting,  and  hardly 

91 


THE  ETIOLOGY  OF  LYING 

preventable,  their  veniality  is  proven;  and 
they  assume  at  once  a  new  moral  aspect, 
and  appeal  to  our  sympathy.  For  then, 
since  we  have  been  accused  of  the  worst 
offense  unfairly,  our  good  name  may  be  the 
more  easily  retrieved.  The  sympathy  of 
the  world  is  always  ardent  for  the  culprit 
who  has  been  unjustly  accused,  and  if  he  has 
actually  been  convicted,  the  rush  to  the 
rescue  is  impetuous.  Sometimes  it  seems 
to  be  a  short  cut  to  the  heart  of  emotional 
society  for  one  to  get  himself  unjustly  in- 
carcerated. Innocence  behind  bars  or  under 
a  cruel  sentence  is  one  of  the  most  pathetic 
objects  in  the  universe. 

If  we  shall  find  that  many  of  the  inac- 
curacies ought  either  to  be  known  by  gentler 
names  than  lying,  or  perhaps  that  there  are 
extenuating  facts,  the  gain  to  the  accused 
will  be  immense.  Vindication  of  the  con- 
demned is  always  a  gracious  act  and  a  happy 
one,  unless  it  leads  to  worse  offenses.  But 
if  the  condemnation  has  been  unjust,  the 
gain  for  the  accusers  is  also  great;  for  it 
prevents  their  errors  from  doing  further 
harm.  The  voluntary  accusers  of  a  crime 
that  has  never  been  committed  are  worse  off 
morally  than  the  actual  culprits,  and  more  to 
be  pitied. 

92 


THE  ETIOLOGY  OF  LYING 

Any  fair  study  of  the  uttered  falsehoods 
of  men  must  show  that  a  large  proportion 
of  them  are  unconscious.  Unaware  as  we 
are  of  the  way  they  appear  to  others,  most 
of  them  are  told  in  the  belief  that  they 
are  true.  The  offenders  are  either  uncon- 
scious of  what  they  say,  or  mean  to  say  some- 
thing entirely  different,  in  its  application  to 
life. 

When  we  begin  to  analyze,  and  look  for 
the  causes  of  falsehoods  we  find  them  largely 
to  consist  of  influences  and  conditions  that 
are  very  rarely  thought  of.  One  of  the 
commonest  causes  is  the  half-impressions  or 
the  false  impressions  we  get  from  the  words, 
looks  and  acts  of  others.  Back  of  this  men- 
tal effect  are  several  conditions  that  are  as 
plain  as  day.  One  of  them  is  fright.  This 
often  produces  such  agitation  of  the  mind 
as  to  make  it  unable  to  remember  or  re-state 
with  any  degree  of  accuracy  the  simple 
things  that  have  been  seen  and  heard.  Hence 
all  sorts  of  fictions  are  told;  and  many  of 
them  are  catalogued  as  lies  by  the  unchari- 
table. Usually,  in  the  fright,  two  emotions 
are  uppermost,  the  sense  of  danger  and  the 
desire  to  escape;  and  the  memory  of  events 
and  details  is  always  more  or  less  clouded 
by   these    emotions.       Under    the    circum- 

93 


THE  ETIOLOGY  OF  LYING 

stances  it  is  impossible  for  the  mind  to  have 
thoughts  apart  from  feelings,  hence  the 
thoughts  are  all  emotions,  otherwise 
thoughts  with  likes  or  dislikes;  and  this 
mental  state  is  inimical  to  accuracy.  Truth, 
exact  statement,  accurate  memory,  come 
with  mental  calmness  and  self-containment. 
These  give  an  ability  to  take  in  impressions, 
record  them  in  the  memory  exactly,  and  tell 
them  with  utter  truthfulness.  There  is  no 
other  way  besides  this  whereby  we  can  re- 
ceive mental  impressions  and  preserve  them 
accurately. 

Another  fruitful  source  of  half-impressions 
is  mental  embarrassment,  diffidence  and 
self-consciousness.  This  state  differs  very 
little  in  its  effect  from  that  of  fright.  The 
thing  that  most  impresses  the  mind  is  one's 
own  feelings,  and  what  he  sees  or  hears  is 
altogether  secondary.  One's  sense  of  em- 
barrassment amounts  to  a  fear.  The  other 
sensation  that  is  uppermost  is  one  of  anxiety 
to  escape  from  the  embarrassment. 

You  see  a  boy  playing  with  other  children 
and  hear  him  talk  and  shout  like  the  rest. 
You  call  him  to  you  and  ask  him  what  his 
name  is,  how  old  he  is  and  where  he 
lives.  He  looks  at  you  with  a  blank  and 
embarrassed    gaze,    colors    a    little,   and   is 

94 


THE  ETIOLOGY  OF  LYING 

dumb.  He  will  not  utter  a  word  by  any 
amount  of  coaxing.  If  you  scold  him  for 
impoliteness  and  stupidity  he  may  look  a 
trifle  less  at  ease  but  he  will  not  speak.  If 
you  pinch  him  he  will  cry,  perhaps,  but  not 
answer  your  questions.  If  you  keep  him 
with  you  for  an  hour  and  deal  gently  with 
him  he  may  find  his  tongue,  and  talk  and 
answer  questions,  but  not  otherwise.  Now, 
if  you  are  thoughtless,  or  jump  to  a  con- 
clusion, you  may  say  that  the  boy  is  dull, 
stupid,  or  wilful;  but  he  is  none  of  these. 
And  he  is  a  fair  type  of  many  adult  people 
who  are  subjects  of  much  wonder  and  com- 
ment. 

A  man  who  had  once  helped  articulate  a 
human  skeleton,  described  one  day  to  a  sim- 
ple-minded servant  girl  the  grim  details  of 
the  process.  He  told  how  the  flesh  had 
been  scraped  from  the  bones,  how  these  had 
been  soaked  for  days  in  a  vat,  and  then 
been  bleached  in  the  sun  before  being  wired; 
and  all  about  the  mechanism  of  the  wiring. 
The  girl  looked  at  him  with  a  blank  sort  of 
countenance  as  he  talked,  and,  when  he  had 
finished,  she  said,  "Did  the  man  live?" 
Those  who  heard  it  thought  her  unspeakably 
stupid,  for  she  was  incapable  of  asking  the 
question    humorously.      There    seemed   no 

95 


THE  ETIOLOGY  OF  LYING 

other  possible  explanation  of  her  remark, 
after  she  had  listened  to  all  the  minutiae  of 
flesh  and  vat  and  bleaching  and  wires. 
The  verdict  was  a  case  of  idiotic  dulness. 
But  that  was  not  the  true  explanation;  the 
bystanders  failed  to  take  into  account  the 
complete  absorption  of  the  girl's  attention 
in  the  fact  that  she  was  being  addressed 
by  a  person  of  superior  importance;  and 
that  she  was  under  a  heavy  burden  of 
embarrassment  in  consequence.  She  heard 
the  words  spoken  to  her;  yet  not  one 
in  twenty  remained  in  her  mind  when  he 
had  finished,  and  none  of  them  gave  her  any 
distinct,  rational  idea  further  than  that  a 
man  had  had  something  done  to  his  bones. 
She  could  not  possibly  have  told  whether 
he  was  dead  or  alive.  While  the  man 
was  talking  the  embarrassment  at  the  pres- 
ence before  her  was  decreasing  a  little,  and 
if  he  had  talked  for  an  hour  the  discomfort 
would  probably  have  sufficiently  passed  off 
to  enable  her  to  take  in  and  reason  about 
what  he  was  saying.  But  long  before  this 
second  phase  of  her  mental  movement  had 
been  reached,  she  was  startled  by  the  fact 
that  he  had  finished  his  narrative,  and  that 
she  was  expected  to  make  some  response. 
This  exigency  drove  out  of  her  mind  any 

96 


THE  ETIOLOGY  OF  LYING 

conception  she  might  have  had,  even  in  a 
hazy  way,  of  the  story  she  had  listened  to. 
The  only  ideas  then  left  her  from  which  to 
frame  a  remark  were:  man,  flesh  and  bones. 
It  is  no  wonder  she  asked  a  question  that 
implied  the  greatest  stupidity;  and  one  that 
might  have  implied  the  greatest  sense  of 
humor.  Let  any  one  who  doubts  that  an 
emotion  can  drive  a  thought  or  mood  out  of 
mind,  please  to  recall  the  last  time  he  for- 
got the  familiar  name  of  some  friend  on 
attempting  to  introduce  him  to  another. 
Few  adult  people  have  escaped  this  experi- 
ence. 

These  two  examples  illustrate  how  dififi- 
dence  may  prevent  the  plainest  words  from 
being  heard  and  understood,  and  from  pro- 
ducing any  mental  response  whatever,  or  any 
that  is  accurate  or  adequate.  But  there  are 
many  other  circumstances  that  do  the  same 
sort  of  mischief  for  mental  impressions,  and 
to  people  of  every  age  and  of  all  shades  of 
mental  capacity.  The  wise  and  learned 
alike  have  experiences  not  psychologically 
different  from  those  of  the  boy  and  the 
servant  girl. 

A  young  man  came  into  the  office  of  a 
middle-aged  lawyer  and  introduced  himself 
by  a  name  that  called  up  to  the  other  a  flood 

97 


THE  ETIOLOGY  OF  LYING 

of  youthful  memories.  The  young  man  re- 
sembled his  mother.  He  had  her  hair  and 
eyes;  and  his  voice  was  gentle,  as  hers  had 
been  in  her  youth.  How  strange  and  yet 
how  interesting,  he  thought,  that  her  son 
whom  he  had  never  seen  before,  should  be 
here  asking  for  his  professional  advice! 
How  the  looks  and  voice  and  ways  of  the 
mother  came  back  to  him,  and  what  he  had 
thought  of  her  and  said  to  her,  and  perhaps 
what  she  had  said  to  him!  As  these  ideas 
rushed  through  his  mind  he  perceived  sud- 
denly, with  a  little  mental  shock,  that  the 
young  man  had  already  told  him  several 
details  of  the  business  that  had  brought  him 
there  for  advice.  And  he  could  only 
vaguely  remember  the  details.  Then  he 
felt  embarrassed  lest  he  should  appear  to 
the  youth  to  be  dull  and  inattentive.  So  he 
gathered  his  wits,  and  paid  strict  attention 
to  the  rest  of  the  account;  then  adroitly 
asked  to  have  his  mind  refreshed  about  the 
first  statements;  and  by  a  series  of  questions 
and  hints  covered  up  his  bungling  at  the 
beginning.  If  he  had  been  as  unsophisti- 
cated and  frank  as  the  simple  girl,  he  might 
have  made  remarks  that  would  have  seemed 
as  stupid  as  hers  did. 

Every  person  of  imagination  has  had  ex- 

98 


THE  ETIOLOGY  OF  LYING 

periences  of  this  kind.  There  is  nothing 
phenomenal  about  them.  The  mind  can- 
not take  in  and  hold  equally  well  all  the  im- 
pressions that  come  to  it;  and  it  often  hap- 
pens that  the  thing  or  thought  most  vividly- 
perceived  by  a  person  is  not  the  one  that 
others  expect  him  to  grasp  first  and  best. 
So  all  shades  of  misunderstanding  arise,  all 
kinds  of  misfits,  warped  accounts,  and  mis- 
statements about  things.  People  are  ac- 
cused of  lying  wittingly,  when  they  have 
simply  misunderstood,  or  half  understood 
words.  They  are  thought  obstinate  and 
stupid,  or  impolite  and  rude,  when  they  are 
simply  bashful,  preoccupied  or  dreaming, 
or  misunderstand  others  as  truly  as  they 
themselves  are  misunderstood. 

Another  cause  of  wrong  notions  acquired 
from  the  words  of  others  is  a  common  men- 
tal habit  of  what  may  be  called  impetuous 
impressionableness.  When  a  statement  is 
begun  we  fly  to  a  conclusion  of  what  its  end 
is  to  be,  before  we  hear  a  quarter  of  it. 
We  divine,  or  think  we  divine,  and  guess 
ahead  of  the  words  as  they  are  uttered;  we 
usually  guess  wrong,  and  remember  our  im- 
pressions of  what  the  statement  was  to  be, 
rather  than  what  it  was;  then  like  simple- 
tons go  off  and  tell  our  impressions  for  the 

99 


THE  ETIOLOGY  OF  LYING 

truth.  The  result  of  this  is  too  often  a  com- 
plete subversion  of  the  meaning  of  the  state- 
ment. 

The  condition  of  mind  that  leads  to  this 
species  of  blunder  is  one  of  great  mobility 
and  intense  avidity  of  impression,  but  it  re- 
quires for  its  perfection  also  a  peculiar 
quality  of  egoism  that  gives  one  an  exalted 
sense  of  his  own  ability  to  divine  and  grasp 
the  meaning  of  the  words  of  others  before 
they  are  half  spoken.  It  requires  a  sense 
of  modesty  to  wait  until  the  final  word 
before  judging  the  trend  of  the  story;  and 
modesty  is  so  ungilded  a  virtue,  and  so 
quiet,  that  we  often  lose  sight  of  it,  or  keep 
it  hidden.  To  be  able  to  get  the  drift  of 
the  story  just  as  it  is  begun,  compliments 
our  conceit  and  magnifies  our  powers.  And 
it  is  not  true  that  people  with  the  habit  of 
jumping  to  conclusions  generally  know  they 
are  conceited.  They  are  like  the  old  bishop 
who  is  said  to  have  replied  to  a  cautious 
criticism:  "I  am  not  conceited,  sir;  I  am 
simply  conscious  of  my  superiority."  But 
the  fruit  of  the  habit  persists  always,  and  it  is 
a  tangle  of  misconceptions,  mis-statements 
and  errors,  into  which  its  victims  are  for- 
ever falling  and  dragging  numerously  their 
friends  and  neighbors. 

100 


THE  ETIOLOGY  OF  LYING 

One  of  the  most  remarkable  mental  side- 
tracks is  that  which  results  from  previously 
acquired  notions  of  what  we  are  to  meet  in 
word  or  incident.  If  we  have  a  positive  and 
fixed  idea  of  the  thing  we  are  to  see  or  hear, 
ive  are  liable  to  find  ourselves  imagining 
afterward  that  we  have  actually  seen  or 
heard  that  thing,  whether  we  have  or  not. 
So  strong  is  this  tendency  that  it  often  robs 
one  of  the  power  to  gather  knowledge  from 
sight  and  hearing  with  any  degree  of  accu- 
racy. Some  men  are  so  impressed  with  this 
danger  that  they  study  to  avoid  it.  Many  a 
time  a  consulting  physician  asks  not  to 
be  told  the  diagnosis  already  made  of  the 
case  he  is  to  examine,  lest  it  should  disturb 
the  accuracy  of  his  observation,  or  the  inde- 
pendence of  his  thought. 

Once  an  intelligent  layman  was  invited  to 
see  an  operation  for  the  correction  of 
strabismus.  He  went  believing  that  the 
operation  would  consist  in  taking  the  eye 
out  of  the  patient's  head,  straightening  it 
and  putting  it  back  again,  and  he  told  me 
months  afterward  his  thought  of  what  he  had 
observed.  He  said  that  the  surgeon  took 
the  eye  out  of  the  patient's  head,  straight- 
ened it  and  put  it  back  into  its  socket,  and 
that  thereafter  the  patient  could  see  straight. 

lOI 


THE  ETIOLOGY  OF  LYING 

In  response  to  my  categoric  questions  he  as- 
sured me  that  he  stood  within  three  feet  of 
the  patient's  head  during  the  operation;  that 
there  was  a  good  light;  that  he  saw  all  and 
that  he  had  good  eyes;  that  nothing  inter- 
vened between  himself  and  the  patient,  and 
that  the  surgeon  took  the  eye  out  of  the 
head,  brought  it  far  enough  away  for  a 
sheet  of  paper  to  have  been  passed  between 
it  and  the  head,  before  it  was  returned  to 
its  socket.  He  told  me  too  that  he  was 
sober  at  the  time,  and,  he  believed,  per- 
fectly sane. 

Of  course  he  saw  nothing  of  the  ridiculous 
thing  he  described.  He  did  observe  this: 
the  surgeon  with  a  forceps  grasped  the  thin 
white  conjunctival  membrane  at  the  inner 
side  of  the  eye,  pulled  it  forward,  made  a 
slit  in  it  with  scissors,  then  passed  through 
the  slit  a  minute  blunt  hook,  with  which  he 
caught  up  a  tenuous  muscle  which  he  pulled 
out  as  a  loop  over  the  hook.  With  scis- 
sors he  cut  this  half  across  to  weaken  it, 
then  returned  it  to  its  place,  and  the  opera- 
tion was  over.  But  the  man's  fixed  idea  of 
what  he  was  to  see  was  too  much  for  him. 
Probably  the  next  day  after  the  operation  he 
would  have  told  a  more  truthful  story. 
But,  little  by  little,  the  memory  of  what  he 

102 


THE  ETIOLOGY  OF  LYING 

observed  grew  dim,  and  his  preconceptions 
grew  stronger,  till,  months  afterward,  they 
came  to  take  the  place  in  his  mind  of  what 
he  had  seen,  and  so  he  was  ready  to  swear, 
in  all  sincerity,  to  the  fable  that  he  told  me. 
We  guess  what  may  be  meant  by  a 
word  or  look,  a  sign  or  motion,  and  build  up 
a  whole  fabric  of  wrong  meaning  out  of  it. 
We  pick  a  word  out  of  a  sentence,  and 
surmise  for  it  a  meaning  wholly  unin- 
tended; and  we  make  or  let  it  suggest  an 
erroneous  ulterior  intent.  Go  into  the 
wards  of  any  hospital  and  of  a  hundred 
patients  lying  in  bed  observe  a  surgeon  ask 
each  one  in  succession  to  turn  over  on  his 
back,  and  you  will  see  ninety-nine  of  them 
turn  on  their  faces,  or  commence  to  turn 
before  they  discover  their  error.  It  is  in- 
variable, and  after  a  patient  is  laughed  at 
for  it  he  will  sometimes  forget  and  do  it 
again  in  response  to  the  same  question. 
Why  is  it?  How  does  it  happen?  I  know 
of  no  sufficient  explanation  but  this:  that 
the  patient  has  a  flash  impression  that  the 
doctor  wishes  to  examine  his  back. 
"Back"  is  the  only  word  that  remains  in 
his  mind  as  a  moving  force  for  his  action. 
He  divines — the  doctor  has  not  told  him — 
that  it  is  desired  to  examine  his  back  an^ 

103 


THE  ETIOLOGY  OF  LYING 

he  immediately,  out  of  politeness,  turns  his 
back  uppermost. 

You  may  make  another  request  of  a  hun- 
dred patients  and  not  more  than  one  will 
appreciate  it  correctly,  and  be  able  to  do,  on 
the  first  attempt,  the  simple  maneuver  you 
ask  for.  The  request  is,  "Please  open  your 
mouth  wide,  and  breathe  through  it  natu- 
rally." Three  quarters  of  them  will  open  the 
mouth,  take  a  deep  breath  and  hold  it.  If 
you  tell  them  to  let  the  breath  out  they  will 
do  this,  but  close  the  mouth.  It  seems  to 
be  impossible  for  even  an  intelligent  person 
to  get  the  several  ideas  expressed  by  this 
simple  request,  and  act  upon  them  accu- 
rately. Is  it  any  wonder,  then,  that  in  a 
multitude  of  other  ways  we  jump  to  con- 
clusions from  words  and  hints  half  under- 
stood, and  then  state  the  conclusions  as  if 
they  were  accurate?  Is  it  any  wonder  that 
many  of  these  should  be  called  fabrications, 
or  even  lies? 

In  telling  a  thing,  or  giving  an  opinion  on 
any  subject  that  your  listener  is  interested 
in,  the  chances  are  ten  to  one  he  will  fail  to 
quote  or  understand  you  correctly,  however 
sincere  he  may  be  in  trying.  If  he  is  wor- 
ried about  the  matter,  or  has  fears,  he  will 
surely  misunderstand  what  you  say  in  spite 

104 


THE  ETIOLOGY  OF  LYING 

of  your  care  in  the  selection  of  words.  If 
you  say:  "I  suspect  that  the  boiler  you 
are  worried  about  has  a  broken  flue," 
he  will,  in  two  minutes,  quote  you  back  to 
yourself  with  the  words,  "So  you  think  a 
flue  is  broken?"  You  may  correct  him  and 
say  you  suspect  it  is  broken,  and  in  one  min- 
ute more  he  will  declare  that  you  believe  it 
is  broken.  Say  to  a  sick  man  that  you  do 
not  know  what  ails  him,  but  suspect  cancer, 
and  you  are  quoted  at  once  as  saying  that 
he  has  that  disease. 

Words  misunderstood  or  half  heard  or 
heard  wrong,  are  a  source  of  the  saddest  of 
errors,  and  of  some  of  the  most  lamentable 
embarrassments  of  life.  A  lady  went  to  see 
her  banker,  who  was  also  her  friend,  on  a 
matter  of  great  moment.  He  found  her 
waiting  in  his  outer  office  as  he  passed  hur- 
riedly through,  and  said  a  few  words  to  her. 
He  spoke  them  in  a  slurring,  mumbling 
manner;  the  lady  listened  in  a  surprised, 
ungrasping  way.  What  he  said  to  her  was: 
"I  have  an  urgent  letter  to  dictate,  and  shall 
be  glad  to  see  you  in  a  minute."  What  she 
heard  him  say,  or  thought  she  did,  was: 
"I've  enough  bother  to  placate  and  don't 
care  to  see  you  a  minute";  and  she  walked 
out   of    the   bank    in    tears,    and    reported 

105 


THE  ETIOLOGY  OF  LYING 

abroad  that  he  had  both  rebuffed  and  in- 
sulted her.  And  all  manner  of  severe 
things  were  said  of  him  by  his  neighbors 
and  enemies.  It  was  so  unlike  him  that 
some  went  so  far  as  to  say  that  he  must  have 
been  intoxicated,  even  if  it  was  before  bank- 
ing hours  in  the  morning. 

Then  the  meanings  of  common  words,  as 
used  by  different  people,  vary  so  much  that 
to  the  speaker  and  the  listener  they  often 
stand  for  variant  if  not  divergent  things  and 
ideas,  and  so  make  confusion  common.  The 
accurate  transmission  from  mouth  to  mouth 
depends  on  hearing  distinctly,  remembering 
precisely,  and  holding  the  same  meanings 
of  the  words  used.  And  no  two  people  hold 
identical  meanings  for  all  the  words  com- 
mon to  their  vocabularies.  They  do  not 
usually  vary  much,  but  enough  sometimes 
to  make  men  reach  opposite  notions  on 
many  subjects.  Many  a  quarrel  leading  to 
an  accusation  of  lying  has  had  no  better  or 
other  basis  than  this;  and  good  intentions 
seem  to  be  little  protection  against  the  mis- 
fortune. Carefulness  is  some  safeguard,  and 
it  is  encouraging  to  notice  that  there  are 
some  people  who  measure  their  words  when 
telling  of  any  vital  matter,  and  take  pains 
to  know  that  they  are  accurately  understood. 

lo6 


THE  ETIOLOGY  OF  LYING 

In  giving  an  account  of  what  has  hap- 
pened or  been  said,  we  often  bungle,  and 
betray  a  poor  memory.  We  retain  a  few 
words  and  ideas  and  the  rest  fade  away  into 
hazy  uncertainty.  When  we  repeat,  we  use 
the  few  facts  and  words  we  remember  and 
fill  in  the  rest  of  the  picture  out  of  our 
imagination,  or  our  guesses  as  to  how  the 
complete  story  must  be.  It  is  this  filling  in 
that  makes  the  commonest  type  of  canards, 
the  awful  whoppers  of  stories  that  grow  as 
they  pass  from  mouth  to  mouth.  Once  it  had 
been  announced  that  some  gentlemen  had 
determined  to  build  a  hotel  on  a  mountain. 
It  was  thought  to  be  a  remarkable  undertak- 
ing, but  the  account  was  clear  and  distinct, 
the  names  of  the  men  well  known,  and  it 
seemed  to  be  understood  by  the  community. 
A  few  days  afterward  another  company  of 
gentlemen  announced  that  they  would 
build  a  hotel  at  the  foot  of  the  mountain. 
In  a  few  days  more  the  report  was  current 
on  the  street  that  the  mountain  enterprise 
had  been  abandoned — that  it  was  because 
it  would  be  too  expensive  to  build  two 
hotels,  and  it  would  be  more  economical  to 
use  the  lower  site.  No  man  of  either  com- 
pany had  given  the  slightest  warrant  for  this 
conclusion.       It   grew    up    in    the    popular 

107 


THE  ETIOLOGY  OF  LYING 

mind,  not  out  of  whole  cloth,  but  out  of  the 
guesses  of  well-intentioned  people  from  the 
little  they  knew  of  the  two  schemes.  Some 
of  them  guessed  that  it  must  be  too  expen- 
sive to  build  two  hotels,  and  that  the  second 
scheme  may  have  resulted  from  the  aban- 
donment of  the  first.  The  guess  had  not 
reached  the  third  noddle  in  its  flight  before 
it  had  developed  into  a  positive  declaration, 
on  the  best  authority,  that  the  mountain 
scheme  had  been  abandoned. 

A  gentleman  in  Chicago  was  asked  by  a 
friend  what  would  be  done  if  his  wife's 
mother,  two  thousand  miles  away,  should 
fall  sick.  He  replied  that  his  wife  would 
go  to  her  by  the  first  train.  Two  days 
afterward  he  was  startled  by  another  friend 
who  told  of  having  heard  that  the  mother 
was  very  sick,  and  that  the  daughter  had 
actually  started  to  go  to  her.  He  took 
pains  to  find  out  how  the  story  had  grown, 
and  learned  that  his  original  statement 
had  (between  the  two  friends  referred  to) 
passed  through  the  lips  of  just  three  peo- 
ple, two  women  and  one  man,  to  come 
back  to  him  in  this  distorted  shape.  And 
each  one  of  the  three  was  a  person  who  had 
a  conscientious  regard  for  the  truth. 

Things  said  in  jest,  with  irony  and  hyper- 

io8 


THE  ETIOLOGY  OF  LYING 

bole,  and  understood  literally,  furnish  a 
never  ending  supply  of  errors  of  all  sorts. 
A  mistake  of  any  kind  can  grow  out  of  an 
ungrasped  jest,  and  blunders  swarm  in  this 
manner.  Once  a  woman  held  in  her  arms 
her  baby  of  a  week,  and  discussed  its  pros- 
pects with  the  family  doctor.  It  was  her 
first  baby,  and  while  she  was  fond  of  it,  she 
was  also  fond  of  society  and  amusements. 
She  complained  that  she  could  not  go  to 
any  concerts  or  parties  during  the  season, 
for  she  could  not  afford  a  nurse  for  the  baby 
and  would  have  to  stay  at  home  and  tend  it 
herself.  She  looked  sorrowful  and  discon- 
solate and  asked  the  doctor  if  he  could  sug- 
gest any  way  out  of  the  difficulty.  The 
doctor  drew  his  face  down  and  replied  in  a 
discouraged  tone  that  there  was  one  way  of 
escape  if  she  cared  to  take  it.  She  bright- 
ened and  asked  what  it  was,  and  he  replied: 
"You  might  kill  the  baby."  Just  then  an- 
other woman  entered  the  room  and  the 
invalid  (too  shallow  to  see  the  irony  of  the 
suggestion)  said  to  her,  "What  do  you  sup- 
pose the  doctor  wants  me  to  do  with  my 
baby?     He  has  advised  me  to  kill  it." 

The  first  fictions  of  child  life  are  a  fruit- 
ful source  of  error,  and  even  falsehood. 
The  child  is  full  of  fancies  and  has  a  varied 

109 


THE  ETIOLOGY  OF  LYING 

imagination,  especially  about  the  things  of 
adult  life,  and  soon  learns  to  invent  stories. 
These  are  air  castles  that  all  bright  children 
indulge  in,  usually  with  the  assistance  of 
their  parents.  There  is  a  large  literature  of 
fairy  tales,  and  children  are  told  made-up 
stories  to  amuse  thern.  The  result  is  to 
increase  their  fancies  and  imagination. 
At  about  ten  to  twelve  years  of  age  some 
children,  especially  girls,  are  found  telling 
many  of  their  fancies  as  if  they  were  true. 
Every  observing  person  has  known  cases  of 
this  kind.  A  little  girl  goes  out  on  an 
errand,  or  to  visit,  and  presently  comes  back 
to  her  mother  with  the  most  astounding 
account  of  what  she  has  seen,  and  v^hat  she 
has  said  and  done,  and  the  things  said  to 
her.  And  the  experience  she  tells  of 
always  ministers  in  some  way  to  her  own 
egoism  and  conceit.  But  the  accounts  are 
almost  pure  fabrications.  These  cases  are  a 
great  grief  to  their  friends  who  cannot 
understand  that  the  habit  is  not  likely  to 
continue  through  life.  As  a  matter  of  fact, 
a  year  or  two  of  this  experience  usually  ends 
by  a  swing  of  the  pendulum  in  the  opposite 
direction,  and  the  child  becomes  a  most 
insistent  truth-teller. 

This  vice  is  no  evidence  of  total  depravity. 

no 


THE  ETIOLOGY  OF  LYING 

It  is  simply  proof  that  an  imaginative  child 
at  a  certain  time  of  its  life,  when  its  fancies 
are  most  active,  is  unable  to  draw  a  sharp 
line  between  its  fictions  and  the  reality.  It 
was  the  misfortune  of  the  child  that  it  had 
too  much  imagination;  that  it  yielded  to  the 
promptings  of  this  too  much,  and  that  it 
had  not  learned  the  lessons  of  accuracy. 
But  it  comes  to  its  senses  later,  discovers 
how  wrong  it  is  to  tell  a  fancy  for  the  truth, 
and,  in  many  instances,  becomes  more  reli- 
able in  its  after  years  because  it  has  had  this 
experience,  and  been  shocked  by  it. 

There  is  another  emotional  impulse  that 
leads  many  adults  and  more  children  into 
manifold  prevarications.  It  causes  one  to 
vary  his  stories  and  accounts  of  things  to  suit 
what  seems  to  him,  perhaps  for  the  moment, 
the  best  to  please  his  hearers.  In  telling  a 
story,  or  giving  an  account  of  some  event,  it 
is  important  to  impress  the  listeners  both 
with  the  event  and  with  the  descriptive 
powers  of  the  person  who  tells  it.  There- 
fore the  account  is  embellished,  enlarged, 
colored  in  the  most  inviting  manner,  to  suit 
what,  perhaps  wrongly,  is  supposed  to  be 
the  desire  or  taste  of  those  who  listen. 

We  covet  the  pleasure  that  comes  from 
the   compliments   of   others.     If   we  tell   a 

III 


THE  ETIOLOGY  OF  LYING 

good  story  we  are  more  certain  of  the  com- 
pliments. To  tell  it  truthfully  might  lessen 
them.  Then  sometimes  we  vary  the  truth 
to  avoid  censure.  This  is  a  most  natural 
impulse — yet  the  impulse  of  cowardice — the 
desire  to  avoid  a  scene.  Husbands  are  said 
to  resort  to  this  finesse  to  placate  their 
wives;  possibly  wives  have  done  it  to 
placate  their  husbands.  And  children  do  it 
in  the  most  natural  manner;  with  many  of 
them  it  seems  to  come  with  the  quality  of 
an  instinct. 

One  of  the  most  prolific  sources  of  in- 
accuracy is  our  weakness  for  the  superlative 
degree.  Our  imagination  and  our  love  of 
the  startling  lead  us  to  minify  the  minute 
things,  and  magnify  the  large  ones,  so  that 
we  reach  a  point  vwhere  it  is  next  to  impos- 
sible to  give  the  measure  of  anything  out  of 
the  average,  or  an  average  thing,  exactly  as 
it  is.  And  even  our  own  repetitions  of  the 
same  thing  often  grow  successively.  We 
find  that  the  ciphers  are  added  little  by 
little  to  the  figures  of  our  descriptions.  We 
start  at  tens.  Before  we  know  it  we  are  tell- 
ing it  for  hundreds. 

Of  all  the  foibles  that  beset  us.  no  one  is 
more  constant  or  irresistible  than  this.  It 
becomes  a  matter  of  intemperance  like  the 

112 


THE  ETIOLOGY  OF  LYING 

child's  ardor  for  amusements;  and  it  shows 
that  adult  people  are  only  children  of  a 
larger  size.  A  child  is  first  satisfied  with  a 
simple  and  temperate  amusement;  then  tires 
of  it— ceases  to  be  amused,  and  requires  one 
more  exciting.  That  wears  itself  out  and  a 
still  more  exciting  one  must  be  found,  till 
finally  a  condition  of  absolute  frenzy  may 
be  reached,  where  nothing  satisfies.  This 
is  the  daily  observation  of  childhood,  not  of 
all  children  but  of  many  of  them.  Psy- 
chologically, w^e  have  the  same  experience 
in  our  telling  of  things.  To  represent 
them  exactly  as  they  are,  small  or  large, 
becomes  tame  and  we  tire  of  tame  things. 
We  seek  for  new  and  more  intense  descrip- 
tions, and  so  pass  into  fiction,  and  when  our 
fictions  run  against  the  nerves  or  the  inter- 
ests of  other  people,  they  are  liable  to  brand 
them  with  terms  that  are  also  superlative. 

Bearing  upon  this  general  question,  there 
is  another  large  influence  that  is  usually 
left  wholly  out  of  our  reckoning,  and  yet 
it  is  one  that  is  ever  present,  and  con- 
trols more  or  less  the  life  of  every  normal 
person.  This  influence  consists  of  the 
numerous  phases  of  life  and  character  that 
people  unavoidably  have  to  lead.  I  say 
unavoidably,  because  both  the  proprieties  of 

113 


THE  ETIOLOGY  OF  LYING 

life  and  the  wholesome  influences  of  the 
normal  mind  compel  this  multiplied  exist- 
ence. In  order  to  keep  their  places  in 
society  to  their  own  satisfaction,  all  people 
must  hide  some  part  of  their  lives  from 
most  of  the  world.  They  reveal  different 
phases  to  different  companies.  The  com- 
panies may  be  large  or  small,  and  they  are 
in  the  main  segregated  from  each  other  by 
sharp  lines.  The  public  in  general,  one's 
personal  intimates,  the  different  elements 
of  one's  family,  his  friend  or  father  con- 
fessor, his  doctor,  and  even  some  casual 
friend,  are  so  many  distinct  entities  that  see 
the  man  differently.  To  each  he  reveals 
something  of  himself  that  is  different  from 
what  others  see;  some  perceive  qualities  the 
others  never  dream  of,  and  the  picture  of  the 
man  as  seen  by  each  is  different  from  that 
seen  by  the  others.  Nor  does  the  man  re- 
veal the  whole  of  himself  to  even  all  these 
companies  combined;  some  part  of  his  life 
he  keeps  to  himself  absolutely.  No  human 
life  is  ever  fully  known  or  completely  writ- 
ten down.  No  man  would  be  able  to  tell  the 
whole  story  of  himself,  even  if  he  tried  to. 

Instinct  and  custom  make  it  easy,  when  not 
disturbed  by  unusual  emotions,  to  keep 
these  different  phases  of  life  apart,  and  hold 

114 


THE  ETIOLOGY  OF  LYING 

them  strictly  for  the  respective  audiences 
that  they  are  intended  for.  Some  men 
swear  and  use  vile  language  with  men,  but 
are  always  polite  and  clean  spoken  in  the 
presence  of  women;  especially  if  these  are 
not  their  wives  or  sisters.  And  the  discrim- 
ination seems  to  be  so  effortless  that  it 
must  work  with  the  ease  of  an  automaton. 

A  cultivated  and  wealthy  woman  was  for 
many  years  a  leader  in  society.  Other 
women  imitated  her  and  tried  to  get  into 
her  set;  yet  an  unexpected  call  on  her  one 
day  caught  her  swearing  at  one  of  her  maids. 
She  did  not  swear  in  the  presence  of  men, 
not  even  of  her  coachman. 

People  of  all  qualities  of  intelligence  and 
character  discriminate  as  to  what  they  tell 
people  and  what  withhold.  We  agree  that 
the  truth  should  not  be  spoken  at  all  times 
and  to  all  people.  Is  it  a  constructive  lie 
to  withhold  a  part  of  the  truth?  You  are 
not  under  oath  to  tell  the  truth  at  all  times, 
and  you  would  not  tell  it  if  you  were,  and 
the  world  does  not  accuse  you  if  you  refrain. 
Even  the  loquacious,  the  excessively  talk- 
ative, find  it  easy  to  keep  certain  things  to 
themselves. 

Your  friend  has  always  seemed  wholly 
frank  with  you  about  himself.      You  believe 

115 


THE  ETIOLOGY  OF  LYING 

you  are  his  confidante  in  everything;  but  you 
are  mistaken.  There  are  things  in  his 
mind,  emotions  'and  life  that  you  could  not 
get  out  of  him  with  moral  dynamite.  Some 
of  them  he  will  tell  to  another  whom  you 
may  regard  as  merely  his  chance  friend,  and 
tell  easily. 

These  ways  are  so  deeply  rooted  in  habit, 
even  instinct,  that  they  are  a  part  of  the 
mental  life.  They  are  undirected  and 
inevitable.  Anyone  who  succeeds  in  wholly 
preventing  these  habits,  in  smothering  his 
native  secretiveness  and  discrimination  as 
to  what  shall  be  told  and  what  withheld,  is 
called  eccentric,  instable  or  daft.  He  is 
singled  out  from  the  mass  of  normal  people 
as  a  curiosity,  and  one  to  whom  it  is  unsafe 
to  reveal  your  soul  or  even  your  daily 
affairs.  If  you  reveal  them  to  him  it  will 
be  tantamount  to  immediate  publication  to 
the  world. 

In  view  of  these  facts  and  circumstances, 
is  it  any  wonder  that  we  sometimes  find 
difficulty  in  drawing  sharp  distinctions  and 
in  keeping  to  the  line  of  the  terms  of  our 
ethics?  Our  ethics  are  based  on  our  under- 
standing of  right  and  wrong.  Our  defini- 
tions of  lying  and  truth  telling  are  to  some 
degree  natural  and   inevitable,  but  they  are 

ii6 


THE  ETIOLOGY  OF  LYING 

largely  man-made,  and  made  because  of  the 
requirements  of  social  life.  They  are  cer- 
tainly good.  Society  could  not  exist  with- 
out them,  and  the  attempt  to  find  out  the 
basis  of  our  falsehoods  and  to  learn  how  we 
step  over  the  line,  sometimes  unavoidably, 
sometimes  avoidably,  cannot  be  taken  as  an 
effort  to  justify  wrong. 

In  our  conduct,  as  well  as  in  our  words, 
we  prevaricate  and  deceive  from  hour  to 
hour.  We  put  the  best  we  have  forward  as 
a  hint  that  we  have  nothing  worse.  Our 
guests  are  taken  into  the  parlor,  and  if  it  is 
dusty  we  apologize  as  if  this  condition  were 
exceptional.  We  hide  the  kitchen  from 
them  unless  we  are  sure  it  is  polished.  We 
imply  that  we  are  always  polished  and 
spruce,  when  we  know  better.  We  hide  our 
tempers  as  much  as  we  can,  and  try,  before 
the  public,  to  act  better  than  we  really  are, 
— always  better  than  our  average. 

This  deception  is  laudable  if  it  teaches  us 
to  be  better  and  cleaner;  and  perhaps  even 
if  it  does  not  make  us  better,  it  is  justified 
on  the  ground  that  it  spares  the  world  some 
of  the  unpleasant  things  of  life.  But  it 
leads  to  the  worst  misfits  in  partnerships 
and  unions  of  people  of  all  sorts. 

We  severely  condemn  others  for  verbal  fic- 

117 


THE  ETIOLOGY  OF  LYING 

tions  when  we  know  we  are  introducing  fic- 
tions into  our  daily  lives  all  the  time.  We 
even  go  farther  and  usually  try  to  justify 
our  own  verbal  fictions.  For  to  each  set  of 
people,  each  society  and  cult,  there  are  cer- 
tain subjects  on  which  it  is  a  question  of  the 
highest  honor  to  tell  the  exact  truth,  while 
on  others  lying  seems  as  easy  as  following 
a  natural  law.  Within  a  certain  set,  for 
example,  cheating  at  cards  is  a  most  heinous 
offense;  while  cheating  in  a  college  exam- 
ination is  a  good  joke,  and  constructive 
lying  as  to  a  college  escapade  is  done  as  a 
matter  of  honor.  It  all  depends  on  whether 
it  is  the  individual  or  the  class  conscience 
that  is  touched,  for  each  may  reverse  the 
falsehoods  as  well  as  the  virtues  of  the 
other. 

Many  people  habitually,  and  as  a  general 
course  of  conduct,  act  in  an  uncandid  man- 
ner. It  is  logical  to  trace  the  beginning  of 
such  a  habit  to  the  momentary  joy  it  some- 
how gives  to  act  thus.  But  uncandor  does 
not  nakedly  give  even  momentary  joy.  It 
is  pleasant  only  when  apparently  clothed 
with  power  to  protect  some  selfish  interest; 
otherwise,  when  it  ministers  to  our  egoism. 
When  the  scales  chance  to  fall  from  our  eyes 
we  see  that  our  uncandor  is  a  varnished  sort 

Ii8 


THE  ETIOLOGY  OF  LYING 

of  lying  which  is  always  doing  us  harm,  and 
has  no  justification  but  cowardice  and  con- 
ceit. The  scales  fall  easily  enough  the 
moment  we  learn  of  them — only  this  is 
usually  the  tardiest  of  all  our  learning.  The 
temptation  is  insidious  and  strong  to  vary 
from  the  truth  for  one's  own  temporary 
gain;  it  is  an  untaught  spontaneous  trick  of 
many  of  us  from  childhood,  and  we  do  it  as 
naturally  as  we  breathe.  But  it  is  a  trick 
that  gets  us  more  or  less  into  trouble  and 
ought  to  be  fought  as  original  sin  and  essen- 
tial wickedness.  That,  broadly  speaking, 
truth  consists  with  the  universe  and  pays 
best  in  the  end,  nobody  disputes.  What, 
in  each  of  life's  ever  changing  settings,  the 
paramount  truth  may  be,  is  the  one  great 
half-solved  question  of  our  existence. 

If  you  examine  the  subject  from  all  sides 
and  with  all  the  facts  available,  you  will,  I 
think,  come  to  this  conclusion  inevitably, 
that  to  tell  the  vertical  truth  always,  even 
within  the  proprieties,  is  one  of  the  fine 
arts.  Probably  few  persons  attain  to  it 
absolutely,  and  still  keep  their  force  of  char- 
acter. Those  who  pretend  to  do  it,  and 
always  try  hardest  to  do  it,  are  like  the  man 
who,  in  his  attempts  to  stand  up  straight, 
tips  backward.      In  order  to  accomplish  this 

119 


THE  ETIOLOGY  OF  LYING 

feat  we  would  need  to  be  mechanical,  like 
adding  or  voting  machines  which,  by  their 
cogs  and  contrivances,  are  proof  against 
errors.  But  we  can  never  transform  our- 
selves into  such  machines,  and  if  we  were 
able  to,  the  accomplishment  would  not  be 
wholly  good;  for  it  would  shut  out  imagina- 
tion, which  is  the  talent  that  may  be  said  to 
move  the  world. 

We  cannot  abolish  imagination.  As 
long  as  we  struggle  and  work  we  must 
imagine  first;  we  must  picture  the  thing  to 
be  striven  for,  before  the  striving,  and  the 
pictures  make  the  striving  easier  and  life's 
burdens  lighter.  Our  ambitions  for  material 
things,  for  human  loves  and  for  goodness, 
are  all  pictures  before  they  are  ever — if  ever 
— realized;  and  we  must  imagine  and  strug- 
gle through  life,  until  the  final  picture. 
Imagination  makes  beauty  and  joy,  but  it 
makes  inaccuracy  and  untruth  also.  It  leads 
us  often  to  cross  over  the  line  of  truth  into  the 
domain  of  fiction  that  verges  on  falsehood, 
and  to  many  kinds  of  checkered  conduct. 
However  we  may  strive,  we  cannot  com- 
pletely avoid  this  domain.  We  should 
never  forget  that  others,  as  well  as  our- 
selves, fail  to  escape  it,  that  most  men 
always    have    failed    and    always    will    fail. 

120 


THE  ETIOLOGY  OF  LYING 

Hence  the  failure  is  one  that  we  must  some- 
time, and  in  some  measure,  condone.  It  is 
a  mean  thing  to  try  to  justify  our  own  pecca- 
dillos on  the  ground  that  we  share  them 
with  good  company  or  any  company.  The 
right  thing  is  to  hold  ourselves  responsible, 
while  we  try  to  excuse  others,  for  this  is  the 
only  magnanimous  course.  It  is  the  only 
one  capable  of  making  the  world  better. 
For  it  encourages  that  kind  of  charity  we 
are  always  short  of;  and  lessens  the  unworthy 
egoism  of  which  we  always  have  enough 
and  to  spare. 


121 


Man  as  An  Air-Eatingf  Animal 


Man  as  An  Air-Eating  Animal 


Nature  has  for  us  a  multitude  of  surprises. 
The  thing  that  we  are  not  looking  for  is 
often  the  thing  we  find.  We  expect  to  dis- 
cover the  thing  that  seems  most  obvious  and 
natural,  that  is  most  apparent.  The  tree 
grows  out  of  the  ground,  therefore  the 
ground  produces  it.  Leaves  grow  on  it  for 
some  purpose  of  evident  necessity  to  the 
tree;  but  in  just  what  way  they  are  necessary 
and  what  they  do,  and  how,  are  questions 
that  only  occasionally  concern  us.  We  see 
plants  grow  and  pile  up,  in  their  seeds,  food 
for  our  bodies,  and  are  glad  and  fortunate; 
but  if  we  think  on  the  subject  without  exact 
information  it  is  usually  to  imagine  that 
these  food  products  come  up  out  of  the 
earth  totally,  like  the  trees. 

So  we  reach  the  thought  that  all  ani- 
mals as  well  as  ourselves  have  come  up  out 
of  the  earth  wholly,  either  directly  or  in- 
directly, as  we  seem  to  go  back  to  the  earth 
finally  and  wholly.     To  say  that  man  is  an 

125 


MAN  AS  AN  AIR-EATING  ANIMAL 

air-eating  animal,  a  sort  of  orchid  on  the 
face  of  the  earth,  seems  at  first  thought  to 
be  quite  absurd.  But  to  a  large  degree  this 
is  literally  true,  and  the  fact  is  fraught  with 
great  interest. 

No  adequate  conception  of  this  thought  is 
possible  except  by  an  understanding  of  one 
material  substance,  through  which  directly 
or  indirectly  this  mystery  is  largely  wrought 
out.  That  substance  is  starch;  and  its  part 
in  the  phenomena  of  animal  and  human  life 
is  one  of  extreme  importance. 

The  first  impression  that  the  word  starch 
makes  upon  the  casual  mind  is  of  an  insipid, 
odorless,  white,  grocer's  stuff,  formed  orig- 
inally into  little  masses,  almost  as  regular 
in  shape  and  as  uniform  in  size  as  crystals 
and  at  a  distance  looking  much  like  them. 
All  know  that  it  may  be  pulverized  into  a 
white  powder,  and  that  it  is  made  some- 
times from  grain,  sometimes  from  potatoes, 
and  incidentally  that  when  elaborated  out 
of  corn  it  makes  a  passable  pudding.  The 
mucilaginous  material  which  results  when 
this  substance  is  mixed  with  hot  water  is 
also  known  as  starch.  This,  because  it 
gives  stiffness  to  a  piece  of  cloth,  has  come 
to  be  in  our  estimation  of  the  moral  qualities 
of  people,  a  sort  of  synonym   for   firmness 

126 


MAN  AS  AN  AIR-EATING  ANIMAL 

and  stability  in  general.  The  word  has 
grown  into  use  colloquially  as  a  gentler  ex- 
pression for  vigor  and  incisiveness,  as  "sand' ' 
has  come  rather  crudely  to  mean  back-bone 
and  a  larger  courage.  They  are  useful  vul- 
garisms, like  snap  and  pluck,  and  their  very 
currency  testifies  to  the  popular  admiration 
for  the  attributes  they  signify.  For  at  all 
times,  in  sunshine  and  storm  or  peace  or 
war,  next  to  unselfishness  and  generosity,  the 
quality  that  is  most  sure  of  the  applause  of 
everybody  is  that  expressed  by  the  word 
courage. 

But  starch  has  a  larger  meaning.  It  is 
a  substance  perfectly  definite  in  its  chem- 
ical composition,  and  is  the  most  universal 
food  of  man  and  animals.  It  is  the  food 
of  the  man  directly;  indirectly,  it  is  his 
food  received  through  the  bodies  of  ani- 
mals which  he  eats.  The  animals  build 
up  their  bodies  to  a  large  degree  from  the 
starch  which  their  fodder  gives  them. 
Starch  forms  a  part  of  all  vegetable  growth 
and  its  elaboration  is  a  large  part  of  the 
purpose  of  all  vegetable  life.  It  is  found 
pre-eminently  in  the  leaves  which  are  the 
producing  and  digesting  parts  of  all  plants, 
and  here  it  is  produced,  with  some  sugar  and 
often  with   some  gummy  substance,    to  be 

127 


V 

\ 


MAN  AS  AN  AIR-EATING  ANIMAL 

distributed  for  the  plant's  life  purposes.  It 
is  even  more  deposited  in  the  seeds  which 
furnish  food  for  animals  and  people.  Here 
it  constitutes  a  store  of  nutriment  to  be 
used  in  the  development  of  the  new  plants 
in  their  growth,  from  the  beginning  of  the 
germination  of  the  seeds;  and  it  or  some 
chemical  congener  forms  a  proportion  of  the 
substance  of  the  woody  fibre  of  all  plants. 
Among  the  greatest  of  nature's  reservoirs  of 
starch  are  those  in  the  roots,  bulbs  and 
tubers  of  certain  plants,  where  with  more  or 
less  sugar  it  retreats  from  the  dangers 
of  winter  and  the  environment  above 
ground.  These  reservoirs  are  drawn  upon 
by  the  plants  and  especially  by  the  young 
germinating  ones  in  the  spring  time.  The 
sweet  sap  of  the  maple  tree  is  one  of  many 
examples  of  the  stored-up  sugar  dissolved  in 
the  water  of  the  earth  and  forced  up 
beneath  the  bark  of  the  tree  in  spring  time, 
forced  up  by  the  roots,  for  use  in  the  growth 
of  the  tree. 

Starch  and  its  allied  products  of  sugar  of 
various  kinds,  otherwise  carbo-hydrates, 
constitute  about  56  per  cent,  of  the  best 
arranged  dietary  of  the  human  race;  the 
albuminoids,  including  the  meat,  milk  and 
eggs,   only  amount  to  a  little  over  22  per 

128 


MAN  AS  AN  AIR-EATING  ANIMAL 

cent,  while  the  pure  fats,  both  animal  and 
vegetable,  are  substantially  i6  per  cent. 
The  salts  derived  originally  from  the 
earth  are  about  5  per  cent.  Thus  only 
a  minor  proportion  of  other  foods  besides 
starch  are  really  needed.  The  experi- 
ence of  the  Chinese  well  shows  in  how 
large  a  proportion  starch  may  serve  as  a 
food  for  the  body.  A  small  particle  of 
meat,  especially  fat  meat,  with  a  bowl  of 
starch  makes  the  Chinaman's  meal,  and  it  is 
a  physiologic  diet.  He  frequently  adds  a 
little  dried  fruit  or  some  fresh  vegetable, 
but  if  he  could  possess  himself  of  a  little 
raw  milk  for  one  meal  each  day  he  might 
even  do  without  any  of  these.  And  yet  we 
occasionally  hear  an  educated  person  seri- 
ously inquire  if  there  is  really  any  nourish- 
ment in  a  cracker,  when  he  well  knows  the 
cracker  is  made  of  wheat  flour,  and  ought  to 
know  that  the  major  ingredient  of  the  latter 
is  nothing  but  starch. 

The  composition  of  starch,  the  sugars  and 
the  fats  is  the  same,  as  to  the  chemical  ele- 
ments which  compose  them.  They  are  all 
made  of  carbon,  hydrogen  and  oxygen. 
The  starch  contains  six  parts  of  carbon,  ten 
of  hydrogen  and  five  of  oxygen,  and  the 
wide    physical    differences    between  sugar, 

129 


MAN  AS  AN  AIR-EATING  ANIMAL 

starch  and  fat,  are  due  to  slight  variation  in 
the  proportions  of  the  elements  named. 
One  of  these  substances  is  often  changed  to 
another  in  the  body  by  the  chemical  forces 
of  the  physiologic  laboratory.  But  the 
change  is  in  one  direction  only;  starch 
becomes  sugar  of  several  forms;  sugar 
makes  fat;  fat  may  make  sugar,  especially 
in  certain  diseases,  but  neither  sugar  nor 
fat  is  ever  changed  back  into  starch. 
Starch  once  digested  never  becomes  starch 
again,  but  passes  into  various  chemical  sub- 
stances that  go  to  form  the  tissues  of  the 
body,  and  that  are  used  up  in  the  functiona- 
tion  of  the  organs. 

The  first  step  toward  the  change  of  starch 
into  sugar  in  the  human  body  occurs  in  the 
mouth  in  eating.  The  stomach  is  not  the 
beginning  of  the  human  laboratory  of  diges- 
tion. This  process,  as  far  as  starch  is  con- 
cerned, begins  properly  during  the  act  of 
mastication  and  in  plain  sight.  The  slightest 
touch  of  the  saliva  to  a  cooked  starch  granule 
instantly  transforms  it  chemically,  and  pro- 
duces the  first  step  toward  making  grape 
sugar,  corn  sugar,  or  glucose  out  of  it.  The 
secretions  of  the  intestines,  of  the  liver  per- 
haps, and  certainly  of  the  pancreas  further 
carry  on  this   change,  a  change  that  always 

130 


MAN  AS  AN  AIR-EATING  ANIMAL 

must  occur  before  the  starch  can  become 
incorporated  into  the  tissues.  So  the  saliva 
is  a  very  important  element  in  the  nutrition 
of  the  body.  As  a  major  part  of  our  diet  is 
starch,  if  it  can  be  mixed  well  with  the 
saliva  before  entering  the  stomach,  a  large 
proportion  of  the  digestion  is  accomplished 
at  once.  Hence  the  importance  of  the 
hygienic  injunction  to  eat  all  starchy  foods 
slowly  and  to  insalivate  them  well.  Foods 
of  this  kind  in  our  common  dietary  are 
bread,  and  all  bread  stuffs,  potatoes,  beans, 
lentils  and  all  mushes  and  the  meals  of 
every  kind.  If  the  starch  digestion  is  not 
started  in  the  mouth  and  well  under  way 
before  the  food  reaches  the  stomach,  it 
usually  stops  by  the  effect  of  the  acids 
nearly  always  present  in  that  cavity  (acids 
being  inimical  to  starch  digestion),  and 
must  wait  till  it  passes  out,  perhaps  an  hour 
afterward,  into  the  intestines,  where  the 
fluids  are  alkaline  in  reaction,  and  where  if 
at  all  the  starch  digestion  is  finished. 
Probably  if  the  injunction  to  insalivate  the 
starch-foods  could  be  carefully  observed  by 
all  the  people,  the  dyspepsia  among  them 
would  be  reduced  by  at  least  a  half. 

Such  in  part  is  the  story  of  the  destruction 
of  starch   in   the   laboratory  of   the  animal 

131 


MAN  AS  AN  AIR-EATING  ANIMAL 

body  and  the  upbuilding  and  sustenance  of 
the  tissues  by  it.  But  a  story  of  no  less 
interest  is  that  of  the  laboratory  wherein 
starch  is  created;  where  it  is  built  up  out  of 
the  elements  of  nature  which  are  gathered 
from  two  opposite  sources  for  this  purpose. 
We  have  seen  that  there  is  starch  in  the 
seeds,  the  roots,  the  stalks  and  the  leaves  of 
plants.  The  proportion  of  it  in  these  varies 
greatly  and  varies  in  each  at  different  stages 
of  the  plant  development.  What  is  to-day 
starch  in  the  seeds  or  fruit  may  to-morrow 
or  next  week  become  sugar  by  the  chemistry 
of  nature  in  the  process  of  growing  and 
ripening.  In  the  grains  the  substance  re- 
mains starch;  in  certain  fruits,  as  the  banana, 
it  goes  over  into  some  form  of  sugar  as  the 
fruit  ripens.  The  starch  may  be  developed 
in  the  leaves  to  be  transformed  into  sugar, 
or  some  other  and  allied  substance  that, 
being  soluble,  is  carried  in  the  plant  circula- 
tion back  beneath  the  bark  or  into  the  roots 
and  bulbs  to  be  preserved  there  for  the 
needs  of  the  coming  year.  Something  like 
this,  we  are  told,  takes  place  in  the  ripened 
uncut  grass;  much  of  the  nutriment  has 
receded  from  the  leaves  and  stalks,  and  gone 
back  to  the  roots  for  safe-keeping.  The 
immature  grass  is  cut  for  hay  while  it  holds 

132 


MAN  AS  AN  AIR-EATING  ANIMAL 

the  greatest  amount  of  nutriment  in  its 
leaves,  and  when  dried  is  better  as  fodder 
for  animals;  so,  immature  corn-stalks  cut 
and  dried  are  better  than  the  older  growth. 
There  is  least  starch  in  the  mature  stalks 
and  leaves,  most  in  those  which  are  cut 
■while  in  the  activity  of  their  growth. 

But  where  do  the  elements,  carbon, 
hydrogen  and  oxygen  come  from  to  make 
the  enormous  accumulations  of  starch  that 
we  see  in  plants,  especially  in  the  fruits  and 
seeds?  Where  does  the  plant  procure  them, 
and  how  is  the  union  of  them  in  this  definite 
proportion  brought  about?  In  seeking  an 
answer  to  this  question,  we  discover  that 
carbon  is  the  essential  element  of  organic 
chemistry  and  that  it  enters  into  the  labora- 
tory work  of  nature  as  nothing  else  does  or 
can.  And  we  cannot  take  even  the  first  step 
in  the  study  of  plant  chemistry  without 
finding  that  the  only  thing  necessary  besides 
carbon  (and  the  oxygen  which  is  combined 
with  it  as  the  plant  gathers  it)  to  make 
starch,  is  water,  and  water  is  composed  of 
the  two  elements  of  hydrogen  and  oxygen. 
The  water  comes  from  the  earth  and  is 
sucked  up  by  the  minute  rootlets  of  plants; 
it  is  carried,  or  rather  pushed  by  the  roots 
upward   beneath   their   bark    to   the    leaves. 

133 


MAN  AS  AN  AIR-EATING  ANIMAL 

There  it  is  united  with  the  compound  of  car- 
bon that  is  acquired  from  the  atmosphere, 
and  is  elaborated  into  starch.  The  purpose  of 
the  leaves  is  to  absorb  carbon  from  the  air 
as  well  as  to  elaborate  it  into  other  chemical 
substances.  Carbon  is  never  found  pure  in 
the  air  but  always  in  combination  as  car- 
bonic acid  gas  or  carbon  dioxid,  which  is 
composed  of  one  part  of  carbon  and  two 
parts  of  oxygen.  And  this  is  the  substance 
that  is  absorbed  by  the  expanded  leaf  sur- 
face, and  is  all  essential  in  starch  elabora- 
tion. 

This  substance,  so  invaluable  to  plants,  is 
often  one  of  the  contaminations  of  the 
atmospheric  air  for  animal  life.  As  it 
comes  largely  from  decomposition  of  various 
organic  substances  and  from  the  exhalations 
of  the  lungs  of  animals  and  people,  we  fairly 
conclude  that  other  matters  offensive  to  life 
go  with  it  and  in  similar  proportion;  so  we 
measure  it  to  determine  the  degree  of  the 
offensiveness  of  bad  air  for  respiration. 
Chemists  have  easy  means  of  calculating  the 
amount  of  carbon  dioxid  in  the  atmos- 
phere, but  very  poor  ways  of  determining 
the  other  contaminations.  Where  an 
atmosphere  contains  four  parts  of  carbonic 
acid  gas  to  ten   thousand  parts  of  air,  it  is 

134 


MAN  AS  AN  AIR-EATING  ANIMAL 

not  a  contamination  since  that  is  substan- 
tially the  proportion  at  the  surface  of  the 
earth  at  the  present  time.  In  our  houses 
and  assembly  rooms  the  proportion  may  be 
three  or  four  times  as  much,  and  is  then  a 
contamination  and  detrimental  to  health. 
To  prevent  this  is  one  of  the  purposes  of 
ventilation.  There  is  some  reason  to  believe 
that  away  back  in  the  centuries,  millions  of 
years  ago,  when  plant  life  was  at  its  most 
astounding  development,  and  when  prob- 
ably the  coal  and  oil  that  we  are  now  using 
were  produced,  the  proportion  was  very 
much  greater.  Perhaps  a  million  years 
hence,  instead  of  four  parts  there  will  be 
three  in  each  ten  thousand  parts  of  air. 
When  that  time  is  reached  it  is  only  fair  to 
assume  that  vegetable  life  will  have  become 
proportionately  reduced. 

The  common  conception  of  the  usefulness 
of  the  soil  is  that  it  furnishes  all  the  ele- 
ments necessary  to  the  growth  of  a  plant. 
Nine  people  out  of  ten  will  tell  you  this. 
As  a  matter  of  fact  it  furnishes  very  few  ele- 
ments; really  only  water  and  the  mineral 
salts  which  the  plant  demands.  The  one 
essential  principle  besides,  namely  carbon, 
is  sucked  in  by  the  spread-out  surfaces  of 
leaves.     And  this  is  Nature's  sole  purpose 

135 


MAN  AS  AN  AIR-EATING  ANIMAL 

in  expanding  so  enormously  the  leaf-surface 
of  plants;  it  is  to  catch  enough  of  the  four 
ten-thousandths  of  carbon  dioxid  in  the  air 
to  satisfy  the  needs  and  requirements  of  the 
plant.  If  the  proportion  of  carbon  in  the 
air  were  greater  the  leaf-surfaces  might,  for 
this  chemistry,  be  less.  Through  the  influ- 
ence of  sunlight  and  the  green  substance  of 
the  leaves  known  as  chlorophyl  there  is 
elaborated  in  this  marvelous  leaf-structure, 
and  out  of  the  three  elements  derived  from 
earth  and  air,  the  starch  and  sugar  and  allied 
substances  of  the  plant.  And  it  is  the  air 
that  furnishes  the  only  essential  thing 
besides  water,  and  this  is  one  of  the  facts 
that  reveal  how  it  is  that  men  and  animals 
live  on  air  and  water. 

The  leaves  must  be  spread  out  not  only  to 
catch  the  floating  carbon,  but  the  sunlight 
as  well,  and  the  ingenuity  of  plants  in  this 
particular  suggests  an  intelligence  that  is 
almost  human.  The  plants  gather  together 
for  self-protection,  but  spread  out  their 
leaves  for  the  sunlight,  and  if  they  are  so 
close  as  to  shut  out  the  light  too  much  they 
become  pale  and  puny  like  those  growing 
in  cellars.  For  without  the  sun  there  is 
little  chlorophyl  and  little  determining  plant 
digestion.     The  process  does  not  go  on  at 

136 


MAN  AS  AN  AIR-EATING  ANIMAL 

night,  or  goes  on  very  slowly;  so  the  house- 
plants  fail  to  take  up  the  carbonic  acid  gas 
from  the  atmosphere  during  the  night,  while 
they  absorb  it  freely  by  day.  And  the  day  is 
the  time  when  their  aid  is  least  needed;  at 
night  more  people  are  in  the  house  than  by 
day,  and  they  are  usually  breathing  an 
atmosphere  less  fully  replenished  by  ventila- 
tion, and  often  made  worse  by  lamps  and 
gas  flames.  Then  is  the  time  they  most 
need  some  help,  any  help,  that  will  free  and 
protect  them  from  the  mephitic  products  of 
the  exhalations  from  their  own  bodies. 

It  is  one  of  the  apparent  miracles  of  na- 
ture that  a  soil  can  produce  so  enormous  a 
growth  of  vegetation  as  it  does,  such  tons 
of  crops  year  after  year,  and  with  no  appre- 
ciable change  in  the  soil  itself.  But  it  is 
not  miraculous,  since,  if  the  soil  contains  a 
due  proportion  of  the  phosphates  and  nitrates 
or  allied  salts  and  enough  water,  plant 
growth  is  never  restricted.  The  atmosphere 
covers  every  soil,  and  its  proportion  of 
carbonic  acid  gas  varies  little.  This  one 
requisite  nature  surrounds  the  globe  with 
in  an  almost  unvarying  proportion.  If  the 
supply  is  too  much  drawn  upon  at  some 
place,  or  there  is  cast  into  the  atmosphere 
by  manufacturing    establishments   an  enor- 

137 


MAN  AS  AN  AIR-EATING  ANIMAL 

mous  supply  of  it,  the  normal  diffusion  of 
this  gas  almost  immediately  makes  the  pro- 
portion everywhere  equal. 

The  only  re-inforcement  soils  require 
besides  water  is  in  the  needful  salts,  hence 
the  only  value  of  compost  and  other  fertili- 
zers is  in  the  fact  that  they  may  restore  these 
substances  to  the  earth.  The  great  bulk  of 
all  the  piled-up  vegetable  matter,  the  crops 
and  all,  comes  from  the  air  and  the  water, 
and  absolutely  all  the  starch  and  sugar  are 
thus  produced.  Even  the  food  tubers  that 
grow  in  the  ground,  like  the  potato,  have 
the  same  history;  their  starch  is  produced  in 
the  same  manner.  The  carbon  has  come 
in  originally  from  the  leaves  that  have 
absorbed  it;  has  traveled  in  some  soluble 
form  down  into  the  earth  and  landed  in  the 
beautiful  starch  masses  in  the  tubers. 

But  starch  is  not  the  only  element  of 
nature  that  man  gets  from  the  atmosphere 
for  the  building  up  of  his  body.  We  have 
seen  that  he  must  have  nitrogenous  food  as 
well  as  starch  and  fats.  The  nitrogenous 
foods — the  proteids  as  they  are  called — con- 
tain, besides  carbon,  hydrogen  and  oxygen, 
some  nitrogen,  sulphur  and  a  few  minerals, 
the  chief  distinguishing  thing  being  nitro- 
gen.    These  foods  include  flesh,  milk,  eggs 

138 


MAN  AS  AN  AIR-EATING  ANIMAL 

and  certain  vegetables,  as  beans  and  peas, 
although  the  vegetable  foods,  especially  the 
grains,  contain  a  minor  portion  of  nitrog- 
enous material  in  addition  to  their  starch. 
The  nitrogen  comes  from  the  earth  in  the 
form  of  salts  and  is  carried  up  by  the  roots 
in  solution  in  the  water.  The  decay  and 
destruction  of  the  bodies  of  plants  and  ani- 
mals, and  the  excretions  of  the  latter,  re- 
store nitrogen  to  the  earth.  But  not  all  of 
the  earth  nitrogen  is  derived  in  this  way; 
some  of  it,  as  we  shall  see,  comes  from  the 
air. 

Among  the  most  essential  forms  of  salt 
necessary  for  plant  growth  are  those  com- 
posed in  part  of  nitrogen,  and  when  we  are 
told  that  the  atmosphere  is  80  percent,  pure 
nitrogen  gas,  and  know  that  this  substance 
and  its  combinations  are  so  essential  to  plant 
life  we  wonder  why  it  is  that  this  gas  does 
not  materially  lend  itself  to  this  scheme  of 
plant  upbuilding.  But  it  refuses,  as  the 
ocean  of  salt  water  refuses  to  quench  the 
thirst  of  a  famishing  man.  Although  the 
plant  may  die  or  dwindle  for  want  of 
nitrogen,  it  never  gets  a  particle  of  it 
directly  from  the  atmosphere  which  sur- 
rounds it,  although  eight-tenths  of  the  latter 
consists  of  this  substance.     But  the  plants 

139 


MAN  AS  AN  AIR-EATING  ANIMAL 

have  friends  that  wrest  some  of  the  nitrogen 
gas  from  the  air  to  replenish  the  earth,  so 
that  the  earth  may  in  time  replenish  the 
plants.  These  friends  are  certain  microbes, 
organisms  which  are  microscopic  in  size, 
that  burrow  in  the  earth  and  which  have  the 
power  of  taking  nitrogen  from  the  air  and 
making  it  combine  with  earth  minerals, 
producing  a  chemical  change  by  means  of 
which  the  rootlets  of  the  plant  may  be  sup- 
plied with  its  requisite  nitrogenous  elements. 
These  organisms  are  called  nitrifying  mi- 
crobes, and  they  are  encouraged  by  wise 
and  thrifty  farmers  for  their  help  to  vege- 
table growth.  They  grow  and  thrive  about 
the  rootlets  of  certain  plants,  probably  liv- 
ing largely  upon  them,  and  in  a  myterious 
way  capture  the  atmospheric  nitrogen  for 
the  soil,  so  that  the  plants  may  suck  it  up 
dissolved  in  water  as  they  need  it.  The 
plants  that  most  encourage  these  microbes 
are  sometimes  spoken  of  as  nitrifying. 
Their  rootlets  furnish  a  good  food  for  the 
micro-organisms.  Swarms  of  minute  nod- 
ules grow  on  the  roots  of  these  plants,  and 
had  long  been  a  puzzle  to  scientists.  Now 
it  is  known  that  these  little  bulbous  bodies 
are  the  nesting  places,  the  culture  media,  of 
the  microbes;  a  sort  of  pathologic  growth, 

140 


MAN  AS  AN  AIR-EATING  ANIMAL 

like  the  warts  on  leaves  that  have  been  stung 
by  certain  insects.  But  whether  or  not  this 
theory  is  correct,  they  do  not  seem  to  harm 
the  plant  on  whose  rootlets  they  grow. 
Maybe  the  increased  amount  of  nitrogen 
salts  they  insure,  more  than  counteracts  any 
little  injury  they  may  do  by  violence  to  the 
roots.  Certain  forms  of  clover,  and  plants 
akin  to  it,  belong  to  this  class  of  nitrifying 
growths,  and  their  seed  is  sometimes  sown 
on  poverty-stricken  fields  with  no  thought  of 
harvesting  a  crop  of  hay  or  seed,  but  solely 
for  the  purpose  of  replenishing  the  soil. 
When  this  crop  of  convenience  has  reached 
a  certain  height  it  is  destroyed  and  a  profit- 
able crop  is  started  in  its  stead. 

Farmers  will  therefore  sow  a  field  with 
some  fertilizing  clover  seed  and  grow  a  crop 
to  partial  maturity  and  then,  when  the  use- 
ful microbes  have  done  their  full  work,  plow 
it  in  so  as  to  imbed  in  the  soil  every  par- 
ticle, not  merely  of  the  substance  of  the 
plant,  but  of  its  useful  parasites  as  well. 
The  soil  is  thereby  enriched  in  nitrogen 
compounds,  the  nitrifying  microbes  are  pre- 
served for  future  service,  and  a  profitable 
crop  of  grain  or  corn  may  then  be  raised 
from  it. 

Thus   we    see    that    man's    chief    food    is 

141 


MAN  AS  AN  AIR-EATING  ANIMAL 

starch,  and  that  this  mostly  makes  his 
body  fuel,  and  directly  or  indirectly  the 
sugar  and  fats  he  eats,  and  the  fat  he 
creates.  This  and  the  nitrogen  compounds 
that  are  quite  as  essential,  come  mostly 
from  the  air.  So  he  is  an  air-subsisting 
animal,  a  very  orchid  with  legs  and  powers 
of  locomotion.  He  despises  carbon  in  the 
air  because  it  is  an  index  of  the  possible 
contamination  of  it.  He  thinks  it  poisons 
him  if  he  breathes  very  much  of  it,  and  yet 
his  very  life  depends  upon  it.  Taken  into 
his  stomach  in  the  form  of  starch  and  sugar 
and  proteids  it  is  elaborated  into  blood  and 
tissue  and  so  the  body  lives  and  thrives. 
Too  much  carbonic  acid  gas  inhaled  is  cer- 
tainly detrimental.  Too  little  of  it  in  the 
air  for  the  plants  and  for  man  would  starve 
the  race.  Combined  with  oxygen  and 
hydrogen  in  starch  and  sugar  it  is  digested 
in  the  body  to  make  blood;  and  taken  in 
effervescing  water  it  merely  pleases  the 
stomach,  but  is  never  appropriated  as  food. 
If  the  microbes  were  all  suddenly  taken 
out  of  the  world,  vegetable  life  would  be  at 
once  greatly  restricted,  and  it  might  lead  to 
the  partial  or  complete  destruction  of  the 
race.  For  we  are  in  many  ways  dependent 
for  our  very  existence  on  the   spontaneous 

142 


MAN  AS  AN  AIR-EATING  ANLMAL 

efforts  of  little  plants  and  animals  that  we 
usually  forget  about,  and  generally  despise. 
The  very  clover  whose  roots  encourage  the 
microbes  (a  vegetable  product)  to  nitrify 
the  soil,  and  wh^h  is  invaluable  for  that 
reason,  would  rapidly  run  out  of  existence 
were  it  not  for  the  bees  which,  in  stealing 
from  its  blossoms  the  material  for  their 
honey,  unwittingly  and  unconsciously  fer- 
tilize the  flowers  so  that  new  seed  may 
grow.  Insects  are  indispensable  to  the  life 
of  a  large  part  of  the  vegetable  kingdom 
and  a  part  that  man  makes  extremely  use- 
ful. We  hate  the  microbes  of  tuberculosis 
and.  pus  formation  that  kill  off  perhaps  a 
fifth  of  the  race,  and  devote  lives  of  endless 
effort  to  circumvent  and  destroy  them;  yet 
we  depend  on  microbes  to  connive  at  the 
creation  of  food  for  the  whole  race.  We 
hate  insects  as  a  rule;  they  sting  and  bite 
and  tantalize  us;  they  carry  malaria,  yellow 
fever,  and  many  other  diseases  into  our 
blood;  and  we  count  that  spot  of  earth 
blessed  that  is  free  from  those  that  annoy 
us.  But  they  are  the  unintentional  and 
indispensable  allies  of  plant  growth  by 
which    we    live. 


143 


The  Rewards  of  Taste 


The  Rewards  of  Taste 


We  envy  the  man  who  can  be  happy  in  an 
environment  that  we  dislike  or  that  dis- 
tresses his  neighbors.  But  his  gift  may  be 
more  dulness  than-  a  superior  taste;  when 
we  are  sure  it  is  the  latter,  we  doubly  envy 
him. 

To  the  farmer  boy  the  goldenrod  is  a 
weed;  and  the  sunflower  is  an  ugly  thing, 
only  redeemed  by  the  fact  that  its  seeds  are 
useful  for  the  chickens.  Later  in  life  he 
sees  the  glory  of  each  as  a  thing  of  beauty. 
The  boy  finds  musical  pleasure  in  rollicking 
crude  tunes.  When,  years  afterward,  he 
first  hears  the  overture  of  a  great  opera  by  a 
trained  orchestra,  it  is  a  maze  of  sound  to 
him,  but  not  superior  music.  After  a  while 
he  grows,  and  finds  that  he  possesses  a  new 
world  of  thought  and  pleasure.  Then  this 
same  music  creates  profound  emotions  within 
him,  and  as  the  climax  of  the  piece  is 
reached,  his  soul  is  lulled  and  elevated. 

147 


THE    REWARDS    OF  TASTE 

Why  should  the  first  few  notes  of  the  Pil- 
grims' Chorus  ever  bring  tears  to  the  eyes  of 
the  lovers  of  true  music?  Why  should  a  great 
audience  of  Americans  instinctively  rise  as 
one  man,  and  be  for  the  moment  welded 
into  a  oneness  of  spirit  and  purpose,  the 
moment  the  band  strikes  up  the  Star  Span- 
gled Banner?  It  is  sentiment,  you  say;  but 
the  music  is  its  twin,  and  therein  is  the 
essence  of  the  fact.  It  is  because  men  see 
through  the  appearance  of  things  to  their 
deeper  import  —  their  spiritual  meaning. 
The  patriotic  air  instantly  fires  the  mind 
with  the  picture  of  all  the  history  of  the 
nation  and  the  struggles  that  made  it,  and 
bound  the  people  together  in  love  and  devo- 
tion. A  song  of  home  has  a  similar  mental 
effect,  especially  on  those  away  from 
home.  It  is  all  due  to  a  power  of  reading 
through  the  music,  the  word  or  the  hint,  to 
the  idea,  the  history  or  the  picture  beyond. 
This  is  refinement,  which,  in  the  broadest 
sense,  is  a  definition  for  taste. 

The  man  who  has  this  gift  of  seeing  through 
and  beyond  is  a  philosopher,  as  well  as  a 
person  of  taste.  He  can  do  more  than  see 
the  essence  of  things;  and  this  latter  power 
helps  him  to  do  more.  One  of  the  greatest 
of  his  further  achievements  is   his  ability  to 

148 


THE    REWARDS    OF  TASTE 

put  behind  him  the  petty  annoyances  from 
things  and  phases  of  things  that  usually  worry 
people,  and  to  find  pleasure  in  what  is  left. 
Even  disaster  does  not  disturb  him.  He  can 
make  victory  out  of  defeat.  From  the  wreck 
of  plans  and  failure  of  purposes  he  alone  can 
gather  all  the  salvage  and  be  happy.  His 
years  have  given  him  perspective  or  he  has 
borrowed  it  of  others;  he  can  measure 
things  at  their  true  worth;  he  knows  what 
to  save  and  try  to  get  joy  out  of,  and  what 
is  dross  to  be  thrown  away.  Better  still,  he 
knows  how  to  throw  away  the  dross,  and 
can  do  it  quietly,  completely  and  without 
waste  of  energy.  This  is  one  of  the  great- 
est achievements  of  life. 

It  is  the  clear  vision  of  good  sentiment 
and  taste  that  enables  one  to  put  away  fret- 
fulness,  anger  and  chagrin;  and  this  power 
is  one  of  the  things  most  to  be  coveted. 
The  captious,  hypercritical,  jealous  people 
who  are  forever  nagged  by  trifles  and  viola- 
tions of  taste  as  they  see  it,  never  know  the 
real  meaning  of  the  best  taste.  They  are 
charlatans  in  taste.  They  are  shocked  by 
what  they  regard  as  the  degenerate  taste  of 
others;  but  it  is  their  own  inability  to  be 
above  annoyance  by  trifles  that  really 
troubles  them.     They  are  the  victims,  not  of 

149 


THE    REWARDS    OF  TASTE 

the  crudeness  of  others,  but  of  their  own 
poverty  and  weakness.  They  are  at  the 
mercy  of  every  sentimental  wind  that  blows, 
and  yet  they  think  they  have  poise.  They 
have,  rather,  the  psycho-neurosis  sometimes 
called  hyperesthesia,  or  hysteria.  They  are 
ignorant  of  the  great  music  of  harmony  and 
know  little  beyond  that  of  technic;  the 
bird  songs  at  night  jar  their  nerves,  and  the 
sounds  of  waters  keep  them  awake.  Trees, 
flowers  and  playing  children  are  tame  or 
troublesome,  and  the  stars,  the  moon,  and 
the  sunrises  and  sunsets  are  old — they  have 
seen  them  too  often  and  too  much.  Words, 
thoughts,  the  rhythm  of  poetry  and  the 
swing  of  rhyme  have  no  pleasure  for  them, 
because  of  some  fancied  flaw.  They  miss 
half  the  pleasures  of  a  wholesome  life  by 
reason  of  their  morbidness. 

The  best  taste  is  the  power  to  take  and  do 
the  thing  that  profits  most;  and  the  meaning 
of  profit  has  reference  to  both  material  needs 
and  mental  pleasures.  They  are  about 
equally  important;  life  is  unsymmetrical  or 
impossible  with  either  left  out.  Success 
always  means  joy — as  well  as  better  food 
and  clothes.  So  good  taste,  when  it  leads 
to  success,  is  rewarded  in  a  spiritual  as  well 
as  a  material   way.     And   the  spiritual  re- 

150 


THE    REWARDS   OF  TASTE 

ward  is  a  sort  of  perpetual  comfort;  the 
mental  comfort  of  success  is  one  that  lasts — 
it  lasts  for  its  own  sake  and  for  what  suc- 
cess offers  that  may  be  needed;  it  also  con- 
tributes to  our  egoistic  enlargement,  and  that 
is  enjoyable,  whether  it  is   profitable  or  not. 

Good  taste,  otherwise  good  selection,  leads 
us  to  do  things  not  only  for  success,  but 
because  they  are  pleasant  to  do.  It  seeks 
out  the  things  that  profit,  and  lives  on  the 
pleasures  of  them.  It  minifies  the  things 
that  offend;  therefore,  it  must  hate  them. 
But  it  stops  short  of  its  own  harm  in  hating 
them. 

When  the  taste  is  distorted  it  often,  to  the 
harm  of  the  individual,  condemns  things  that 
are  entitled  to  the  highest  consideration, 
since  they  are  needed  for  ultimate  success 
inhuman  affairs.  Taste  that  does  this  can- 
not be  well-balanced,  and  it  is  not  laudable. 
When  a  man  who  needs  to  economize,  sells 
for  a  trifle,  a  thing  that  is  needful  for 
his  business,  solely  because  he  hates  the 
appearance  of  it,  he  shows  bad  taste.  For 
he  will  pay  twice  as  much  for  a  similar 
thing  that  pleases  him  and  serves  him  no 
better;  and  this  is  too  great  a  price  for  the 
satisfaction  of  his  esthetic  sentiment.  He 
has  a  pathologic  exaltation  of   taste  which 

151 


THE    REWARDS    OF  TASTE 

is  a  hindrance  to  him,  and  he  pays  dearly 
for  having  it. 

The  best  taste  ignores  the  dirt,  disfigure- 
ments and  annoyances  it  cannot  help,  and 
that  are  unavoidably  connected  with  life 
and  living.  Moreover,  it  reflects  that  many 
a  thing  called  a  nuisance  is  an  essential  part 
of  the  environment  that  we  must  become 
adjusted  to,  and  ought  for  our  peace  of  mind 
to  be  satisfied  with.  These  things  are  part 
of  the  universe;  we  cannot  expel  them,  but 
may  be  proof  against  their  rasping,  and  can 
even  get  pleasure  out  of  them  if  we  will. 
Who  sees  the  world  as  from  a  height  knows 
that  the  noise  of  the  elements  and  the  tu- 
mult of  children  are  normal  parts  of  it;  as 
the  untidiness  of  men  and  children  is  also. 
Many  good  women  lose  half  the  pleasure 
of  life  because  it  is  not  natural  for  a  healthy 
child  to  keep  itself  and  its  clothes  clean; 
and  it  never  occurs  to  them  that  their  think- 
ing it  ought  to  be  natural,  may  be  comical 
to  others.  Such  people  have  lost,  if  they 
ever  had  it,  one  of  the  largest  elements  of 
good  taste — one  of  the  greatest  gifts  to  man, 
namely,  a  wholesome  sense  of  proportion — 
which  is  another  name  for  common  sense. 

Lack    of   proportion   comes   of   excessive 
sensitiveness,  a  spirit  of  hyper-criticism  or 

152 


THE   REWARDS    OF  TASTE 

nervous  erethism,  which,  being  interpreted, 
means  poor  taste.  Good  taste  represses 
and  minifies  all  these,  and  thereby  helps  to 
bring  us  back  to  a  better  balance. 

Taste,  like  truth, consists  with  the  universe, 
and  one  of  its  greatest  functions  is  to  keep 
us  adjusted  to  it.  It  leads  us  to  try  to 
order  our  lives,  and  seek  our  pleasures  in 
accordance  with  law.  Then  we  have  least 
to  complain  of  and  most  to  be  thankful  for; 
our  troubles  are  minified  and  our  gains 
enhanced. 

In  proportion  to  a  man's  adjustment  to 
the  environment,  to  his  harmony  with  law, 
and  to  his  sense  of  the  measure  of  things, 
will  he  see  through  the  life  conditions  about 
him — see  the  essence  of  things,  and  be  com- 
forted. This  comfort  is  one  of  the  rewards 
of  the  taste  that  grows  with  the  maturing  of 
the  mind.  And  the  mind  often  matures 
slowly.  As  a  rule,  a  man  is  incapable  of 
the  highest  mental  pleasure  before  he  is 
forty;  the  limitations  of  his  perspective  as 
well  as  his  tastes  have  restricted  it  before 
that  time.  After  that  age  he  looks  back  far- 
ther and  measures  things  better;  he  knows 
better  what  to  take  and  what  to  reject. 

The  man  who  has  kept  his  spirit  fresh,  and 
developed  a  wholesome  because  a  balanced 

153 


THE    REWARDS    OF  TASTE 

taste,  is  supremely  to  be  envied.  His  life 
is  happier  than  that  of  the  average  man 
because  of  the  greater  joy-giving  effect  of 
everything  that  touches  him,  and  the  beauty 
he  sees  which  others  miss.  Some  others 
may  see  beauty  more  intensely  than  he, 
because  of  an  exaltation  of  taste,  but  they 
have,  as  a  great  load  of  counterpoise,  more 
aggravations  than  ever  trouble  him — annoy- 
ances that  he  never  knows  of  because  his 
optimistic  serenity  is  proof  against  them. 

This  man  has  another  advantage.  He 
sees  more  of  the  good  in  people,  and  so 
is  more  likely  to  cultivate  it  in  himself. 
Nor  does  he  fail  to  perceive  the  defects  of 
others;  he  knows  them,  but  is  unhurt  by 
them.  He  knows  them  so  well  that  he  can 
see  what  part  may  be  correctable,  and  what 
part  it  is  useless  to  waste  strength  over;  and 
so  at  least  he  is  on  a  basis  of  common  sense 
in  his  efforts  to  help.  He  is  able  to  segregate 
that  badness  of  humankind  which  is  innate, 
unav^oidable  and  connected  with  all  life  and 
living,  and  which  grows  out  of  the  selfish- 
ness and  conceit  that  the  human  race  has  so 
far  been  unable  to  dispense  with.  Much  of 
it  is  as  remediless  as  the  unknowable  is  past 
finding  out.  The  world  is  strewn  with  the 
wrecks  of  struggles  to  correct  faults  that  are 

154 


THE    REWARDS    OF  TASTE 

so  innate  as  never  to  be  removable.  When 
in  a  few  instances  these  are,  by  the  greatest 
exertion,  repressed  a  trifle,  their  lessening 
begets  other  faults  as  bad,  if  not  worse. 

Reformers  need  to  have  good  judgment 
and  weigh  all  the  circumstances  and  condi- 
tions in  estimating  the  good  and  bad,  and 
what  to  attack  and  what  to  let  alone.  Good 
and  bad  are  relative,  not  absolute  terms,  and 
are  largely  meaningless  apart  from  their 
attendant  circumstances.  And  the  reform- 
ers are  often  sadly  short-sighted  in  measur- 
ing circumstances. 

An  English  author  is  said  to  have  charged 
that  Americans  are  devoid  of  good  taste; 
and,  doubtless  they  are,  according  to  his 
standard.  But  the  fact  that  he  thought  we 
have  poor  taste,  while  we  think  our  taste  is 
good,  reveals  a  principle  in  human  estimates 
that  is  interesting.  He  was  a  positive  char- 
acter, with  fixed  notions;  he  was  also  a  most 
fastidious  man.  And  when  we  are  under 
the  spell  of  fastidiousness  we  always  have 
this  difificulty,  that  as  other  people  reveal 
qualities  which  are,  in  our  experience,  un- 
usual, but  do  not  antagonize  our  favorite 
ideas  or  our  particular  weaknesses,  they  are 
amusing;  but  if  they  antagonize  us,  and  grate 
on  our  tender  points,  they  have  bad  taste. 

155 


THE   REWARDS   OF  TASTE 

A  refined  man  holds  his  views  of  etiquette 
and  the  proprieties  with  great  tenacity,  and 
is  very  sensitive  about  them;  his  sensitive- 
ness is  proportionate  to  the  intensity  of  his 
opinions.  But  such  views  belong  to  the 
field  of  esthetics  rather  than  of  principle; 
they  are  more  fastidious  than  vital.  We 
have  the  same  difficulty  with  the  English 
that  the  author  had  with  us.  Some  of  their 
exhibitions  of  taste  are  certainly  bad. 

If  a  man  has  such  positive  views  about 
non-vital  things,  that  in  his  calculation  they 
are  vital,  it  shows  poor  taste.  For  he  is 
then  holding  them  equal  to  things  which,  in 
the  judgment  of  everybody,  are  matters  of 
principle,  like  religion,  honor  and  patriot- 
ism. When  a  man  devotes  himself  to  the 
study  or  practice  of  art  in  any  form  he  is 
almost  certain  to  become  fastidious — for  art 
is  non-essential  in  the  greater  arithmetic  of 
life;  it  is  trifling  when  compared  with  the 
needs  of  bread,  clothes,  warmth  and  shelter, 
and  safety  from  enemies.  Our  English 
critic  was  an  artist  in  a  particular  line,  and 
his  estimates  were  sure  to  be  colored  a  little 
by  his  excessive  development  in  one  direc- 
tion. For  his  art  his  taste  was  correct;  it 
gave  him  joy  but  it  led  him  also  into  pain 
and  discomfort. 

156 


THE   REWARDS    OF  TASTE 

Our  American  taste  fits  our  standards, 
such  as  they  are,  and  it  may  discredit  the 
acts  and  etiquette  of  other  society  and  other 
peoples.  Woe  be  to  our  comfort  if  we  let 
our  estimates  weigh  trifles  as  we  do  the  con- 
duct that  tells  for  the  weal  and  happiness  of 
mankind.  The  final  balance,  the  aggregate 
of  the  rewards  of  taste  over  its  penalties, 
will  always  depend  on  the  fitness  of  the 
taste.  The  dilettante  taste,  the  exalted, 
over-critical  sense  of  the  embellishments  of 
life,  which  forgets  the  things  that  make  for 
comfort,  strength,  good  cheer  and  long  life, 
is  sure  to  encounter  many  obstacles,  and 
often  come  to  grief.  If  we  honor  a  man  for 
his  table  manners  more  than  we  do  for  his 
honesty,  kindliness  and  industry,  we  shall 
experience  a  frequent  jar  to  our  nerves,  and 
we  ought  not  to  be  surprised  at  it. 

Our  tastes  differ  in  their  rewards  as  they 
do  in  their  impediments.  One  of  the  most 
picturesque  among  them  is  that  for  pets 
among  the  lower  animals,  and  especially 
for  small  dogs.  This  is  a  passion  that 
belongs  to  women  mainly,  and  it  is  probably 
a  fact  that  as  this  taste  increases,  that  for 
children  grows  less. 

The  taste  for  domestic  animals  begets 
kindliness   toward    them    which    is   always 

157 


THE   REWARDS   OF  TASTE 

commendable;  and  the  poodle  phase  usually 
goes  with  benevolence  to  all  animals,  and 
a  horror  at  seeing  them  injured  or  abused. 
It  indicates  also  a  rather  fastidious  taste  in 
general,  even  if  not  a  very  cultivated  or 
educated  one. 

In  an  extreme  degree  it  usually  belongs 
to  people  of  considerable  leisure;  indeed 
it  seems  to  be,  in  the  estimate  of  many, 
rather  inconsistent  with  serious  occupa- 
tion. It  bespeaks  a  leisured  class  as  the 
carrying  of  the  fan  by  men  in  China  does. 
Yet  this  taste  gives  comfort  to  those  who 
have  it,  if  not  to  their  neighbors,  and  it  is 
one  that  can  be  easily  gratified.  It  is  really 
a  childhood  taste  carried  into  adult  life,  for 
nearly  all  children,  especially  all  girls,  like 
little  dogs — it  is  next  to  their  love  of  dolls, 
and  is  an  expression  of  the  mother  instinct 
that  is  so  universal  and  so  noble.  One  of 
these  two  phases  of  the  taste  outgrows  the 
other  as  the  child  matures,  and  so  the  gov- 
erning bent  of  the  woman  is  established.  If 
the  doll  taste  thrives  the  more,  the  grown-up 
taste  is  for  children  and  childhood;  if  the 
dog  taste  waxes  stronger,  it  becomes  the 
poodle  propensity  of  adult  womanhood. 

The  two  shades  of  the  taste  are  alike  in 
giving  more  or  less  pleasure;  they  probably 

158 


THE    REWARDS   OF  TASTE 

differ  somewhat  in  the  degree  which  they 
bestow;  and  it  can  hardly  be  doubted  that 
the  taste  for  children  gives  a  greater  aggre- 
gate of  enjoyment.  But  then  it  has  disad- 
vantages. It  is  expensive  and  often 
troublesome;  the  dog  taste  costs  less  and  is 
less  encumbering,  and  it  can  be  indulged 
without  interfering  with  other  pleasures. 
This  last  is  the  true  test  of  the  rewards  of 
any  taste — that  they  can  be  had  with  the 
fewest  drawbacks.  The  drawbacks  curtail 
the  rewards.  Tastes  that  bring  joy  with 
few  inconveniences  are,  other  things  being 
equal,  the  ones  to  seek.  But  that  other 
things  shall  be  equal  is  a  vital  condition. 

Should  people  of  a  strong  taste  that  gives 
pleasure  disparage  those  of  a  different  pref- 
erence? Must  we  insist  that  all  shall  find 
profit  in  the  thing  that  most  profits  us? 
Some  women  who  have  joy  in  their  children 
have  an  unconcealed  contempt  for  those  of 
the  dog  taste,  and  think  they  ought  to  be  in 
better  business  than  acting  as  grooms,  dress- 
ing maids  and  chaperons  for  small  dogs; 
while  the  dog  lovers  commiserate  the  other 
women  for  the  giving  of  themselves  soul 
and  body  to  their  children,  who  often  poorly 
repay  them  for  their  devotion. 

The  love  of  childhood   is,  of  course,  infi- 

159 


THE   REWARDS   OF  TASTE 

nitely  above  the  other  in  spiritual  quality 
and  value  to  the  race.  But  in  the  absence 
of  the  higher  one  the  love  of  a  cat  or  dog 
is  not  ignoble;  it  gives  as  genuine  pleasure, 
if  of  a  lower  order,  and  ought  not  to  be 
begrudged  to  those  who  have  it,  by  others 
more  fortunate.  Besides,  it  is  relatively 
harmless  to  the  community;  with  the  par- 
rots eliminated,  the  pet  animals  are  probably 
less  annoying  to  the  neighbors  than  children 
are.  Nor  are  the  two  tastes  wholly  incon- 
sistent; they  are  often  indulged  together, 
the  pet  animals  being  enjoyed  with  the  chil- 
dren and  by  the  children.  The  dog  is  the 
companion  and  playmate  of  the  child;  and 
the  dog  shows  a  measure  of  attachment,  for- 
giveness and  constancy  toward  his  human 
friend,  that  often  shames  us  for  our  con- 
duct toward  each  other. 

The  taste  for  good  literature  is  one  of  the 
most  satisfying;  and,  now  that  the  public 
has  made  such  lavish  provisions  for  its  free 
distribution,  has  become  one  of  the  most 
inexpensive.  No  one  in  a  town  or  city  but 
can  read  for  the  asking  the  best  books  of  the 
world. 

The  books  most  sought  and  read  by  the 
people  are  works  of  fiction,  and  the  charac- 
ter of  their  pleasure  in  the  stories  they  read 

1 60 


THE   REWARDS   OF  TASTE 

is  a  lesson  in  itself.  It  is,  in  large  part,  the 
young-old  passion  of  the  race  —  the  love 
between  the  woman  and  the  man  —  that 
clothes  the  story  with  an  interest  which 
never  grows  stale  to  people  of  any  age  or 
condition.  Any  girl  or  woman,  boy  or  man 
can  live  over  that  story  by  going  to  the 
public  library  and  borrowing  a  love  tale  for 
nothing.     And  many  people  do  it. 

We  not  only  enjoy  the  fiction,  but  our 
imagination,  if  not  our  discrimination, 
clothes  it  with  lessons  that  are  the  reflection 
of  our  minds,  and  this  process  is  a  pleasure. 
After  we  have  read  into  a  story  several  far- 
reaching  purposes  of  our  own  creation,  it  is 
sometimes  a  little  shock  to  us  to  have  the 
novelist  himself  say  that  the  story  was  writ- 
ten solely  to  amuse  his  readers  and  to  sell 
the  book. 

Similar  tendencies  appear  with  other  prod- 
ucts of  art.  We  are  likely  to  weave  into 
them  motives  beyond  what  the  artist  saw 
and  meant;  as  truly  as  we  sometimes  fail  to 
see  all  the  purpose  he  says  he  has  put  into 
them.  It  gives  us  pleasure  to  do  these 
things.  We  not  only  enjoy  the  novels  and 
the  art,  but  we  enjoy  the  consciousness  of 
our  perspicacity.  That  we  make  mistakes 
is  of  little  moment;  the  average  is  perhaps 

i6i 


THE   REWARDS   OF  TASTE 

about  correct.  We  read  into  the  works 
enough  non-existent  virtues  to  counterbal- 
ance our  unjust  criticisms,  and  so  a  fair  bal- 
ance is  struck. 

Taste  not  only  gets  us  into  trouble,  but  it 
often  gets  us  out  of  it,  and  is  a  power  for 
growth  and  progress  toward  happiness.  We 
like  cleanliness — clean  things,  clean  clothes 
and  houses — and  it  takes  the  place  (in  the 
fastidious  mind)  of  money  and  fine  clothes, 
and  even  of  fine  food.  If  there  is  some 
penalty  in  this  there  is  great  reward  also. 
The  thought  that  she  has  clean  clothes  clear 
down  to  a  clean  skin  gives  many  a  woman 
such  joy  as  riches  alone  could  never  bestow. 

But  some  take  their  joy  only  in  appearing 
to  be  clean  and  neat.  I  once  knew  such  a 
woman;  attractive  in  outward  appearance 
—a  woman  who  talked  much  of  the  society 
in  which  she  had  formerly  moved.  When 
on  an  occasion  the  filth  beneath  her  outer 
clothing  was  discovered  by  one  whose  good 
opinion  she  prized,  she  for  a  moment  showed 
a  trifle  of  embarrassment — but  only  for  a 
moment.  Her  sense  of  the  grandiose  came 
to  her  rescue  promptly,  and  gave  her  a  cheap 
sort  of  solace;  it  drove  the  embarrassment 
out  of  her  mind,  and  she  was  serene. 

Probably  the  greatest  reward  of  taste  in  a 

162 


THE    REWARDS   OF  TASTE 

large  way  is  shown  when  a  new  impulse  or 
an  elevation  in  sentiment  raises  one's  stand- 
ards and  enjoyment  of  life  in  many  direc- 
tions. Examples  of  this  phenomenon  are 
common  enough.  A  boy  suddenly  acquires 
a  liking  for  the  good  opinions  of  those 
whom  he  greatly  respects;  that  is,  he  has  a 
new  taste,  a  new  point  of  discrimination,  a 
new  sense  of  choice.  This  leads  him  to 
change,  sometimes  suddenly  and  without 
his  knowing  it,  his  whole  course  of  life,  for 
the  purpose  of  ministering  to  the  new  taste. 

When  this  occurs  a  new  member  of  soci- 
ety has  suddenly  appeared,  and  the  world 
is  better  for  it.  From  living  regardless 
of  others,  and  being  selfish  and  egoistic, 
he  becomes  a  reformed  being  and  lives 
thereafter  by  a  sort  of  altruistic  egoism,  to 
his  own  infinitely  more  satisfying  pleasure, 
and  to  the  lasting  benefit  of  others.  This 
example  is  not  far-fetched,  but  is  typical  of 
a  long  list  of  slightly  variant  experiences 
among  all  sorts  of  men,  women  and  chil- 
dren, especially  children. 

Hardly  a  finer  example  of  the  wonder- 
fully reforming  influence  of  a  new  taste,  to 
elevate  and  change  the  life  of  a  human 
being,  could  be  found  in  all  history,  than 
that  described  by    Booker   Washington    in 

163 


THE    REWARDS    OF  TASTE 

his  experiences  with   the  cruder  specimens 
of  colored   children  at  Tuskegee.      He  long 
sought  for  incentives   to  arouse  these  pupils 
to  a  higher  civilization.     It  was  a  slow  and 
difficult      process;     their    uncivilized    ways 
were   automatic,    and   had  been  ground  into 
them  by  generations  of  experience,  and  by 
all  the  examples  of  their  own  people.     But 
they   were    teachable    and    obedient,      and 
would  follow    instructions    as    well   as   they 
could,   and   so  appear  civilized.     Only  that 
did    not      satisfy     the    great    teacher    and 
reformer;  there  could  be  no  essential  increase 
in  civilization  till  they  should  come  to  love 
it,  and  make   it  a  part,  not  of  their  mimetic 
conduct,  but  of  their  automatic  lives.      How 
to  create  this  was  the  problem,  and  numer- 
ous  expedients  were   tried  in  the  effort  to 
start  a  desire  for  higher  things.     One  desire, 
even   if  it  were  a  minor  or  trivial  one,  would 
be  a  fulcrum  to  lift  the  personality  to  higher 
levels. 

Some  of  the  efforts  succeeded  a  little, 
some  much,  some  were  apparently  fruitless. 
His  joy  was  found  if  he  could  see  any  im- 
provement in  the  upward  direction.  And 
the  taste  he  found  most  potent  in  arousing 
a  pupil  to  better  things,  and  helping  toward 
other  tastes  that  would    elevate,   was   that 

164 


THE    REWARDS    OF  TASTE 

involved  in  the  ownership  and  use  of  an 
individual  tooth-brush.  If  he  could  see  a 
child  have  a  pride  and  satisfaction  in  own- 
ing and  using,  and  using  exclusively,  this 
instrument  of  physical  purity  he  felt  certain 
of  the  future  of  that  child.  For  it  was  sure 
to  develop  other  tastes  that  would  lead  to 
conduct  helping  to  a  life  of  more  usefulness, 
and  therefore  more  happiness  for  the  indi- 
vidual. To  be  scrupulous  about  his  own 
tooth-brush  meant  a  sense  of  ownership  and 
of  personal  purity.  This  would  develop  into 
a  widening  sense  of  ownership  and  provi- 
dence, and  therefore  of  property — which  is 
one  of  the  greatest  needs  of  these  handi- 
capped people.  More,  it  would  by  the  same 
growth  lead  to  a  lessening  of  the  foolish 
egotism  and  love  of  cheap  display  that  are 
normal  to  a  large  number  of  these  people, 
for  such  emotions  are  incompatible  with  the 
growth  of  the  other  qualities.  Spendthrifti- 
ness  and  love  of  display  are  twin  weak- 
nesses, and  must  go  down  before  the  rising 
strength  of  a  true  taste  for  economy,  and 
respect  for  self  rather  than  respect  for  show. 
And  this  is  the  exact  way  the  problem 
worked  out  practically,  and  always  must 
work  out. 

I  once  knew  of  a  schoolboy  who  had  come 

165 


THE    REWARDS   OF  TASTE 

to  town  from  his  home  in  the  country,  with 
his  language  full  of  rural  idioms  and  crudi- 
ties, and  with  figures  of  extravagant  speech. 
He  was  struggling  along  with  his  studies  as 
such  boys  must,  and  with  poor  perception 
of  his  shortcomings,  when  he  attended  a 
teacher's  convention  held  in  the  town,  and 
heard  a  college  professor  lecture.  It  is 
immaterial  what  the  subject  of  the  lecture 
was,  it  was  the  language  that  riveted  the 
boy's  attention,  and  it  was  a  revelation  to 
his  mind.  The  words  were  simple  and 
terse,  and  chosen  for  fitness  and  perfect 
accuracy.  Their  temperance  and  precision 
were  an  inspiration  to  him.  The  result  was 
that  the  boy  awoke  to  a  sense  of  language 
as  an  instrument  of  expression,  that  he  had 
not  dreamed  of  before.  He  had  been  born 
to  a  new  taste,  and  it  colored  all  his  life 
thereafter. 

On  this  taste  other  tastes  were  built;  he 
could  not  admire  precision  and  fitness  in 
language  without  desiring  similar  precision 
in  other  things,  or  without  loving  the  fact 
and  idea  of  precision.  All  this  meant  schol- 
arship; and  love  of  accuracy  grew  into  a 
taste  for  scientific  truth;  for  science  deals 
with  precise  statements  and  ideas.  And 
taste  in  the  speech  of  men  grew  into  a  better 

i66 


THE    REWARDS    OF  TASTE 

discrimination  for  the  things  about  which 
men  write  and  speak.  Thus  from  this  sim- 
ple incident  dated  the  most  far-reaching  and 
beneficial  changes  in  a  human  life;  whereby 
it  was  illuminated  by  a  refinement  unpre- 
dictable at  the  beginning,  as  it  touched  other 
lives  in  numbers  and  ways  that  could  not  be 
estimated. 

Life  is  toil,  but  it  ought  not  to  be  all  toil. 
Everybody  needs  something  beyond  the 
drudgery  of  daily  labor.  Some  recreation 
is  a  necessity  to  the  best  work  and  the 
largest  usefulness  and  happiness.  To  know 
how  to  relax  and  get  relief  of  mind  after  toil 
is  almost  as  important  as  the  toil  itself;  and 
whoever  can  do  it  finds  his  labor  easier  and 
more  effective.  His  strength  is  greater, 
and  it  lasts  longer. 

There  are  men  who  have  never  learned 
how  to  do  this;  men  of  force  and  capacity; 
men  who  are  potent  in  the  affairs  of  the 
world;  men  who  have  made  fortunes  and 
who  have  swayed  thousands  by  their  elo- 
quence or  their  example, — yet,  on  going  out 
of  business,  or  when  displaced  by  some 
accident  from  the  tread-mill  of  their  indus- 
trial lives,  these  men  are  like  lost  sheep. 
They  have  no  resources  but  the  routine  of 
business,    no    intellectual    refuge    but    shop 

167 


THE   REWARDS   OF  TASTE 

and  shop-talk;  their  fortunes  even  are  almost 
useless  to  them  for  any  satisfying  pleasure. 

They  may  keep  their  bodies  strong  by 
exercise  and  field  sports  —  these  have  done 
wonders  for  the  health  of  many  men  and 
women  run  down  by  too  long  or  too 
intense  attention  to  business,  or  by  house- 
hold or  social  duties.  Such  outdoor  diver- 
sions are  in  every  way  to  be  commended, 
for  they  mean  exercise  in  ways  unusual  to 
the  daily  routine,  and  mean  fresh  air  and 
sunshine  and  tan.  They  have  prolonged 
the  lives  and  improved  the  mental  balance 
and  temper  of  hundreds  of  people,  and  have 
saved  to  the  community  many  fold  more  of 
value  than  they  have  cost. 

But  these  helps  are  not  enough.  It  is  not 
sufficient  that  a  man  has  mental  pleasure 
in  his  golf  while  he  is  playing,  or  in  think- 
ing afterward  of  the  good  strokes  he  has 
made,  or  in  the  anticipation  of  games  to 
come.  The  vacations  to  the  country  or  the 
sea  for  the  summer,  a  perfect  change  in 
occupation,  and  freedom  for  a  few  weeks 
from  the  cares  of  business  are  always  help- 
ful, and  in  our  division  of  labor  and  the 
loading  of  every  man  with  more  or  less 
monotony  in  work,  it  is  every  one's  natural 
due   to    have   such   a    vacation.      Only  such 

i68 


THE    REWARDS    OF  TASTE 

luxuries  are  not  sufficient.  They  give  pleas- 
ure and  bring  strength;  but  their  satisfaction 
is  like  that  from  eating  when  hungry,  or 
resting  when  tired  or  sleeping  after  a  day 
of  fatigue.  It  is  like  fresh  air  and  sunshine 
after  hours  of  work  in  a  shop  or  office  with 
a  stuffy  atmosphere.  It  is  as  delightful  as 
a  drink  of  cool  water  to  a  famishing  man, 
but  it  is  not  in  any  high  degree  intellectual 
or  spiritual;  it  is  in  a  necessary  and  marked 
way  physical, — and  this  only. 

Every  man  needs  some  resource  for  rec- 
reation that  is  intellectual  and  spiritual,  and 
that  points  the  way  to  loftier  things  and  a 
wider  sphere.  It  ought  to  be  one  that  can 
be  enjoyed  at  any  time,  in  the  midst  of 
work,  at  the  noon  hour,  after  dinner  by  the 
lamplight;  anywhere  and  at  any  time  when 
there  is  a  lull  in  the  mental  tension  of  the 
day's  duty  or  the  day's  stent.  It  may  fill  in 
some  of  the  gaps  in  the  minutes  that  are 
usually  devoted  to  personalities, — the  craze 
for  trifles  of  the  doings  of  people,  which 
some  of  the  journalism  and  literature  of  the 
day  encourage,  and  which  the  trivial  tend- 
encies of  our  minds  cultivate. 

This  thing  that  ought  to  be  interjected 
into  the  life  of  a  man  for  his  rest  and  pleas- 
ure  is  some  side-issue  for  his   mind,  some 

169 


THE    REWARDS    OF  TASTE 

object  of  study  or  play,  some  fad  even,  to 
be  pursued  as  an  avocation  year  after  year. 
It  may  run  along  with  his  regular  vocation, 
never  hindering  but  rather  helping  the  lat- 
ter, never  costing  much,  always  pleasing — a 
refuge  from  worry,  and  a  relief  from  the 
exasperating  cares  of  his  calling.  It  may 
be  art,  music  or  literature;  or  systematic 
kindness  or  helpfulness  to  others,  or  it  may 
be  some  of  the  sciences,  or  the  collecting  of 
facts  of  history  or  objects  of  interest.  What- 
ever it  is,  it  is  elevating  to  the  mind  and 
makes  for  higher  rather  than  lower  things 
— and  it  has  no  drawbacks  of  regret,  and 
makes  no  remorse.  Like  the  perfecting  of 
ourselves  in  an  art  or  in  some  useful  knowl- 
edge, or  like  doing  good  without  the  hope 
of  a  return  of  any  kind,  it  leaves  after  it  no 
bad  taste  in  the  mouth  and  no  sting  in  the 
soul. 

What  the  avocation  shall  be,  how  high 
soever  it  shall  rise,  depends  on  the  taste  of 
the  individual.  It  will  be  as  high  as  the 
taste  —  no  higher.  And  there  is  no  finer 
example  of  a  richly  earned  reward  of  taste 
than  this.  None  other  better  shows  how 
well-directed  and  well-cultivated  taste  can 
minister  to  the  comfort  of  mind  and  body, 
and  contribute  to  a  happy  longevity. 

170 


THE   REWARDS   OF  TASTE 

Most  men  who  have  fads  and  avocations 
take  them  up  by  accident;  some  chance 
experience  or  observation  starts  their  minds 
in  the  new  channel.  Help  may  come  from 
the  pursuit  of  them  when  begun  in  this  way, 
as  truly  as  if  they  had  been  planned  deliber- 
ately, but  it  is  not  so  certain  to  come,  and 
the  elevation  of  the  mind  and  spirit  aver- 
ages less.  The  greatest  gain  is  assured 
when  the  avocation  is  selected  deliberately, 
with  a  view  to  its  refining  influence  as  well 
as  to  the  pleasure  its  pursuit  may  give. 

The  best  taste  in  the  selection  is  rewarded 
by  the  largest  return.  And  the  best  will 
usually  keep  the  avocation  a  true  side-issue, 
and  prevent  it  from  swamping  the  resources 
and  interfering  with  the  business  of  life, 
unless  perchance  it  gives  promise  of  being 
able  to  rise  and  become  life's  chief  business. 
There  have  been  cases  where  an  avoca- 
tion was  most  disastrous  to  a  career.  It 
spoiled  the  regular  business  and  could  give 
the  man  nothing  adequate  in  its  place;  and 
its  end  was  a  life  of  bitterness  and  regret. 
Such  are  the  results  of  poor  and  uncontrol- 
ling  taste, — it  is  always  a  poor  taste  that  fails 
to  govern  the  conduct  and  direct  the  life. 

There  are  other  exceptions  to  the  rule, 
where  the   avocation   has  grown  to  be  the 

171 


THE   REWARDS    OF  TASTE 

vocation  of  life,  and  where  fame  and  for- 
tune have  come  to  the  man,  and  benefit  to 
the  world.  Huxley  and  Joseph  Le  Conte 
started  in  life  as  surgeons.  Numerous 
authors  and  scientists  who  have  made  noble 
additions  to  the  common  stock  of  knowl- 
edge, began  in  other  careers  which  were 
dropped  for  the  larger  work. 

It  is  the  right  of  every  man  to  have  his 
feelers  constantly  out  for  a  vocation  that  is 
more  to  his  liking  and  that  promises  more 
for  his  future.  And  if  he  can  grope  for  a 
new  field  by  means  of  the  profit  of  some 
avocation,  he  is  wise.  With  old-world 
restrictions  this  is  less  possible;  but  here  in 
America  such  a  course  is  not  only  possible 
but  altogether  commendable.  Many  a  man 
has  borne  cheerfully  the  burden  of  a  change- 
less and  never-ending  task,  because  he  had 
such  a  refuge.  It  transfigured  his  life  be- 
cause it  pleased  and  dignified  him.  And  if 
one  can  find  through  such  a  diversion  a  bet- 
ter avenue  for  his  major  energy,  and  grow 
into  a  vocation  that  is  at  once  more  con- 
genial than  the  one  he  leaves,  and  profita- 
ble enough  to  give  him  and  his  dependents 
the  comforts  of  life,  he  deserves  universal 
approval. 

Many  a  housewife  finds  the  drudgery  of 

172 


THE    REWARDS    OF  TASTE 

her  domestic  life  a  good  deal  of  a  prison; 
and  her  keepers  are  not  always  kindly.  Per- 
haps she  has  no  companionships  at  home 
that  are  mentally  above  her  toil,  or  capable  of 
lifting  her  above  it.  What  a  blessing  if  she 
can,  by  some'pursuit  of  thought,  lift  herself 
into  a  better  realm  as  she  goes  on  with  her 
cares!  Without  such  a  pursuit  she  is  sure 
to  waste  her  surplus  energy,  if  she  has  any, 
in  trifles,  personalities,  regrets  and  chagrin. 
But  some  study,  or  reading;  some  occasional 
meeting  with  other  women  of  like  tastes,  for 
conference  and  comparison,  may  give  her 
a  new  and  better  mental  realm  to  live  in, 
and  take  her  out  of  prison  and  into  the  day. 
Then  her  domestic  life  ceases  to  be  a  prison; 
its  duties  are  less  irksome  and  are  performed 
with  cheerfulness. 

It  is  only  by  the  gift  of  sentiment  that  the 
hard  grind  of  daily  work  can  be  relieved. 
This  and  this  alone  can,  within  the  walls  of 
a  tread-mill,  create  a  picture  gallery  or  a 
cathedral,  and  make  a  symphony  seem  real. 

A  farmer  boy  worked  in  the  hay  field  in 
the  heat  and  sweat  of  the  summer  days.  He 
did  the  work  that  was  before  him;  did  it 
faithfully  and  without  grumbling.  He  did 
it  without  bitterness  or  any  protest  of  vanity. 
But  he  was  only  half  there;  his  spirit  was  off 

173 


THE    REWARDS   OF  TASTE 

to  the  academy  or  the  college  that  he  had 
never  seen,  and  he  was  doing  the  grander 
work  of  life  that  so  far  had  only  filled  his 
admiring  imagination.  Two  results  fol- 
lowed; he  had  pleasure  in  the  fancy  that 
was  only  second  to  the  reality;  and  the  pur- 
suit of  his  taste  brought  him,  in  his  matu- 
rity, both  knowledge  and  wealth.  He  came 
to  feel  the  uplifting  and  responsibility  of 
that  power  which  he  had  day-dreamed  about 
while  at  work  in  the  hay;  and  through  the 
far-reaching  influence  of  the  bye-pursuits, 
begun  in  the  midst  of  this  boy's  toil,  he 
came  to  the  rewards  of  a  larger  career. 


174 


The  Psychology  of  the  Corset 


The  Psychology  of  the  Corset 


It  is  a  rare  mind  that  can  habitually  and 
wholesomely  regard  human  beings  entirely 
apart  from  the  clothes  they  wear.  Some 
physiologists,  philosophers  and  dreamers  are 
able  to,  but  only  they.  Carlyle  considered 
the  subject  of  clothes  in  a  masterful  and 
unique  essay;  tried  to  conceive  people  both 
clothed  and  naked,  and  in  every  sort  of 
psychologic  relation,  but  it  has  not  influ- 
enced thought  at  large  very  much. 

Throughout  history  the  mental  picture  of 
humanity  has  mostly  represented  it  as 
clothed.  By  nature  utterly  naked,  to  our 
minds'  eyes  our  clothes  are  as  truly  a  part 
of  us  as  though  they  were  fleeces  of  wool 
grown  upon  our  skins.  We  even  dispute 
as  to  whether  it  is  right  to  consider  the 
human  body  in  any  other  way,  and  some- 
times fear  our  youth  may  go  wrong  if  they 
see  the  nude  form  in  cold  marble  or  bronze 
or  on   harmless   canvas.      We   occasionally 

177 


THE  PSYCHOLOGY  OF  THE  CORSET 

shut  such  things  out  of  public  places,  and 
fence  the  rising  generation  away  from  them. 

The  way  in  which  the  simple  and  pure- 
minded  folk  in  the  country  districts  of  Japan 
have  at  times  ignored  the  requirements  of 
clothes  has  startled,  if  not  shocked,  many 
good  souls  of  our  civilization  when  they  have 
witnessed  it  for  the  first  time.  To  the  re- 
flecting mind  it  shows  what  strenuous  impor- 
tance we  attach  —  and  usually  without 
knowing  it — to  the  covering  of  the  body. 
Such  shocks  awaken  us  to  the  philosophic 
as  well  as  the  hygienic  relations  of  clothes. 

Next  to  the  general  subject  in  interest  is 
the  fact,  at  first  seemingly  unjustified  by 
reason,  that  the  two  sexes  must  always  be 
clothed  differently.  So  rigid  and  pervad- 
ing is  this  rule  that  we  stop  to  gaze  and 
remark,  if  at  any  time  custom  permits  iden- 
tical garments  to  be  worn  by  both.  Yet  they 
belong  to  the  same  species  of  living  things, 
and  have  similar  physical  needs  and  dan- 
gers. And  surely  their  differing  work  and 
functions  in  life  cannot  make  so  sweeping  a 
disparity  in  clothes  necessary.  There  must 
be  some  other  reason,  as  there  is  for  the 
great  amount  of  time  and  attention  people 
give  to  dress. 

Garments,  therefore,  have  great  meaning 

178 


THE  PSYCHOLOGY  OF  THE  CORSET 

in  many  ways,  and  differing  meanings;  the 
garments  of  each  sex  have.  But  it  seems  to 
me  that  no  other  article  worn  by  either  sex 
has  a  significance  so  peculiar  and  weighty 
as  that  of  the  corset.  It  has  an  influence  on 
those  who  wear  it  and  on  the  rest  of  man- 
kind as  well.  It  relates  to  the  longevity  and 
mental  traits  of  the  wearers,  and  of  the 
generations  of  men  that  follow  each  other. 

It  is  now  exclusively  an  article  of  woman's 
wear,  although  at  times,  in  Europe,  it  has 
been  used  by  a  few  men.  Its  origin  dates 
back  almost  to  the  escape  of  the  race  from 
barbarism,  if  not  even  farther,  and  it  has 
experienced  numerous  changes  in  form  and 
size,  as  fashions  have  changed.  Formerly 
it  was  a  heavy  and  cumbersome  affair,  but 
the  inventions  and  mechanical  skill  of  the 
closing  century  have  developed  a  lightness, 
grace  and  cheapness  never  dreamed  of  by 
the  dames  of  an  earlier  time. 

The  desire  of  womankind  to  shape  the 
female  figure  according  to  standards  of 
beauty  must  have  begun  almost  with  the 
savage.  In  the  ruins  of  Palenque,  in  Mexico 
(of  which  there  is  not  a  scrap  of  written  his- 
tory), was  found  in  stone  a  bas-relief  of 
a  woman  with  bandaged  waist.  Circular 
and    transverse    folds    and    loops — strips   of 

179 


THE  PSYCHOLOGY  OF  THE  CORSET 

cloth  used  to  compress  the  form — are  clearly 
shown  in  the  sculpture. 

In  the  eastern  archipelago,  at  discovery, 
young  women  were  found  wearing  a  corset  of 
spirally  arranged  cones  of  rattan.  They 
wore  this  garment  till  their  marriage.  In 
Java  women  eat  clay  to  keep  thin.  In  Cey- 
lon there  are  books  devoted  to  the  subject 
of  how  to  train  slender  waists.  Among 
some  of  the  authorities  on  the  subject  it  is 
held  that  the  world-wide  standard  has  been 
a  waist  that  can  be  clasped  by  the  two 
hands.  Circassian  ladies  formerly  wore — if 
they  do  not  still  do  it — corsets  made  of 
morocco,  and  wore  them  by  night  as  well  as 
by  day.  The  Hindoos  insist  that  woman's 
waist  should  be  slim.  The  Chinese,  almost 
alone,  bind  the  feet  and  let  the  waist  grow 
as  it  will. 

In  the  ruins  of  Egypt  and  Thebes  no 
corsets  have  been  found  figured,  but  in  the 
book  of  Isaiah  (III,  24)  occurs  a  declara- 
tion that  there  shall  be  "instead  of  a  stom- 
acher a  girding  of  sackcloth,  and  burning 
instead  of  beauty."  A  stomacher  is  a  rigid, 
vertical  stomach  board,  worn  for  a  similar 
purpose  as  a  corset.  Homer,  560  years 
before  Christ,  refers  to  the  cestus  or  girdle 
of  Venus,  as  worn  by  Juno  to  increase  her 

180 


THE  PSYCHOLOGY  OF  THE  CORSET 

"personal  attractions,"  Terence,  the  Ro- 
man dramatist  (i6o  B.  C),  refers  to  ladies 
who  "saddle  their  backs  and  straightlace 
their  waists  to  make  them  well-shaped." 

Strutt  says  Roman  women  wore  a  bandage 
about  the  waist  called  strophium.  Vari- 
ous other  names  have  been  used  at  different 
times  to  convey  the  same  idea,  as  zone, 
mitra,  cestus,  stays,  bodice,  busk  and  cor- 
set. Before  the  conquest  of  Rome  by  the 
Hunnish  tribes  ladies  wore,  so  it  is  written, 
"a  kind  of  corset  which  they  tightened  very 
considerably."  After  this  period  of  human 
history,  the  subject  was  buried  from  liter- 
ature, as  perhaps  from  human  thought,  for 
many  generations. 

Queen  Elizabeth  wore  a  corset  made  of 
nearly  solid  metal.  So  did  Catherine  de 
Medici.  Busks  of  wood,  iron  and  ivory 
were  much  worn  before  the  end  of  the  fif- 
teenth century.  Their  effects  were  severe 
and  harmful.  These  old,  rude  affairs  some- 
times made  deep  excoriations  of  the  skin. 
Said  an  old  writer:  "What  hell  will  not 
women  suffer,  strained  and  lasted  to  the  very 
quick,"  "to  make  their  forms  thin  as  a  Span- 
iard's!" 

But  this  iron  and  board  cuirass  disap- 
peared at  the  time  of  the  French  revolution, 

i8i 


THE  PSYCHOLOGY  OF  THE  CORSET 

to  be  followed  by  the  lighter  articles  of 
these  later  days.  In  1829,  a  Boston  writer 
says,  women  even  wore  corsets  in  bed  all 
night,  and  tightened  them  on  lying  down, 
and  again  on  rising  in  the  morning.  Serv- 
ants often  wore  busks  that  prevented  them 
from  bending  over. 

While  fashion  orders  what  in  general  the 
corset  shall  be,  the  inventive  skill  of  manu- 
facturers to  some  extent  leads  or  guides  the 
fashion.  To  consider  all  the  forces  that 
influence  fashions  would  involve  an  inquiry 
far  too  broad  for  the  present  study. 

The  corset  of  to-day,  as  worn  about  the 
waist  between  the  outer  and  under  clothing, 
reaches  from  near  the  arm-pits  to  the  hips 
and  below.  It  fits  the  form  with  various 
degrees  of  snugness,  depending  on  differing 
circumstances  that  influence  the  wearer,  but 
it  rarely  fits  loosely.  The  pressure  which  it 
exerts  on  the  body  has  been  measured  with 
instruments  of  precision,  and  found  to  be  on 
an  average  slightly  over  six-tenths  of  a 
pound  to  the  square  inch,  or  from  twenty  to 
seventy  pounds  in  the  aggregate.  The 
average  difference  in  the  circumference  of 
the  waist  with  and  without  the  corset,  is 
about  two  and  one-half  inches;  and  the  vital 
capacity    of    the    lungs    as    machines     for 

182 


THE  PSYCHOLOGY  OF  THE  CORSET 

breathing    is    lessened   by   corset    wearing, 
about  twenty  per  cent. 

The  corset  is  made  to  adjust  itself  to  the 
form  at  any  degree  of  pressure,  by  lacing- 
strings  at  the  back.      It  has  very  distinct 
physical   effects  upon  the  body,  and  on  the 
physiology  of  the  wearer,  as  well  as  upon  her 
anatomy  and  form.      First  of  all,  it  sustains 
the  body;  it  is  an  outside  skeleton  that  the 
wearers  are  apt  to  declare  to  be  of  great 
assistance  in  maintaining  the  erect  posture 
comfortably;    it  is  a  convenience  for  the  fit- 
ting of  garments  about  it,  and  for  sustaining 
the  clothing  of  the  lower  extremities.     If  it 
is  worn  rather  loosely,  it  perhaps  does  not 
interfere    in    any   way   with     the    ordinary 
physiologic    functions    of    the    body;     but, 
drawn   too  firmly,  as  the  fashion  has  some- 
times required— or  seemed  to— it  compresses 
the  waist   and   forces   the   ribs   inward — the 
lower  ones  especially — to  such  a  degree  as 
to  make  severe  pressure  along  a  transverse 
line  of  the  liver.     This  creates  a  permanent 
depression    or    shallow    groove    along   the 
upper  (or  front)  surface  of  that  organ,  caus- 
ing more  or  less  degeneration  of  its  tissue — 
the  scJmur  Leber  of    the   Germans.      Above 
and  below  this   line  the  liver  may  appear 
like  two  tumors.     The  organ  thus  changed 

183 


THE  PSYCHOLOGY  OF  THE  CORSET 

is  harmed  for  functionation,  and  perma- 
nently impairs  the  health  of  the  individual. 

Tight  lacing  also  interferes  with  respira- 
tion to  some  degree;  it  compels  the  breath- 
ing to  be  done  by  the  upper  part  of  the  chest 
almost  solely,  for  it  is  quite  impossible  to 
contract  the  diaphragm  and  so  force  down- 
ward the  organs  below  it,  as  in  abdominal 
breathing,  without  causing  discomfort  in  the 
viscera  of  the  upper  abdomen  by  the  violent 
movement  of  them  up  and  down.  With  a 
narrowed  waist  the  vertical  excursion  of 
these  organs  in  each  act  of  ordinary  breath- 
ing is  twice  as  great  as  with  a  normal  waist. 
If  these  movements  are  attempted  the  labor 
of  respiration  is  found  to  be  so  great,  and 
the  churning  of  the  squeezed  liver  and 
stomach  so  uncomfortable,  that  no  woman 
would  think  of  keeping  it  up  as  a  habit. 
The  upper  chest  breathing  is,  under  these 
circumstances,  so  much  easier  and  more 
restful,  that  it  is  practiced  automatically. 

Tight  lacing,  too,  interferes  with  the 
action  of  the  stomach,  intestines  and  liver, 
in  the  process  of  digestion;  it  often  pro- 
vokes palpitation  of  the  heart,  and  forces 
downward,  to  their  harm  and  inconvenience, 
the  organs  of  the  abdomen  and  pelvis.  As 
a  consequence  of  these  various  disturbances 

184 


THE  PSYCHOLOGY  OF  THE  CORSET 

in  people  who  wear  the  corset  too  tight,  it 
occasionally  happens  that  faintness  and 
even  swooning  occur  when  the  nervous  sys- 
tem is  over-wrought  and  the  body  depressed 
by  some  other  condition  of  bad  hygiene,  as 
breathing  the  air  of  a  crowded  room  or  audi- 
torium, or  eating  too  much  or  of  indigesti- 
ble foods.  Waist  pressure  also,  to  some 
degree,  retards  the  return  of  the  blood  from 
the  lower  extremities,  and  so  conspires  to 
produce  varicose  veins  (mostly  below  the 
knees,  but  occasionally  reaching  to  the 
hips),  a  disease  that  is  always  uncomfortable 
and  tiring,  and  sometimes  fraught  with 
serious  consequences. 

It  should  not  be  understood  that  these 
profound  symptoms  are  always  or  even 
generally  produced  by  the  wearing  of  the 
corset.  They  are  sometimes  so  produced, 
with  the  gravest  injury  to  the  wearer,  and 
the  lives  of  some  women — many  in  the 
aggregate — are  darkened  by  invalidism  last- 
ing through  years,  or  are  cut  short  by  death, 
owing  to  lesions  started  in  this  manner. 
It  is  at  the  same  time  true  that  the  corset 
may  be  loosely  worn  through  life  by  a 
healthy  woman  of  good  vigor,  with  no  seri- 
ous injury  to  her  health  or  longevity,  or  to 
the  health  of  her  children.     Such  a  woman, 

185 


THE  PSYCHOLOGY  OF  THE  CORSET 

so  clothed,  will  usually  outlive  the  average 
man,  and  have  fewer  days  of  sickness.  And 
it  is  grossly  untrue  to  say  that  the  corset 
thus  worn  by  such  a  woman,  is  as  harmful  to 
the  wearer  and  her  progeny  as  the  foot-bind- 
ing among  Chinese  women.  Such  a  state- 
ment could  only  be  true  of  unhealthy  and 
unvigorous  women,  who  require  the  best 
hygiene  as  a  constant  condition  of  any 
adequate  career. 

There  is  one  possible  hygienic  reason  for 
wearing  the  corset.  It  seems  to  be  proven 
that  fewer  women  than  men  have  pulmonary 
consumption.  In  a  majority  of  cases  this 
disease  begins  in  the  apex  of  one  lung. 
Why  should  not  the  apices  of  women's  lungs 
be  as  susceptible  as  those  of  men?  The 
upper  chest  breathing  favored  by  corset 
wearing  has  been  offered  as  a  tentative 
answer  to  the  question.  Perhaps  it  is  cor- 
rect; but  even  if  it  is,  this  can  only  in  a 
small  part  atone  for  the  injury  the  corset 
has  otherwise  done  the  race. 

But  the  physical  effect  of  the  corset,  or 
the  abuse  of  it,  has  been  often  exploited  and 
much  discussed,  and  there  is  little  or  noth- 
ing new  to  be  said  about  it.  It  is  like  any 
other  habit  of  the  people  that  is  begotten  of 
fashion — everything  else   in   the  life  of  the 

1 86 


THE  PSYCHOLOGY  OF  THE  CORSET 

individual   becomes,   somehow,   adjusted  to 
it.     The  habits  of  womankind  are  not  likely 
to  undergo  any  radical  change  in  this  par- 
ticular,   and   no   amount   of    preaching   that 
health  missionaries  may  do  will  lead  to  any 
great    alteration    or    improvement    in    the 
clothing    of   the    race.       The    clothing    will 
change  from  time  to  time,  and  perhaps  for 
the  physical  benefit  of  the  people,  and  the 
corset  will    change  with   the   rest;    we   can 
even   imagine  it  to  be   laid  aside,  and  to  go 
out   of   use.       But    the   changes   will    come 
through  example,  and  not  from  precept  or 
persuasion.     The  arguments  for  change  will 
be  sociologic  or  psychologic,  not  hygienic. 
The  psychologic  phase  of  the  subject  is  the 
most   interesting  one,  and   the   one   usually 
neglected  or   forgotten.     The  very  sugges- 
tion that  there  can  be  such  an  aspect  of  it 
v/ill  seem  absurd  to  many  persons.      But  the 
corset  worn  by  the  woman  of  modern  society 
enters    into   her   mental    life    in    the    most 
intimate  way.     She  can  no  more  get  away 
from  this  fact  than  she  could  dispense  with 
her  lungs,  or  appear  habitually  on  the  street 
smoking  a  pipe.     And  unnumbered  genera- 
tions in  the  past  have  witnessed  a  like  ex- 
perience. 

Every  voluntary  act  of  human  life  has  its 

187 


THE  PSYCHOLOGY  OF  THE  CORSET 

psychologic  counterpart;  we  think  the  act 
while,  or  before,  we  do  it.  But  not  always 
to  the  same  effect  or  in  the  same  way. 
Many  of  our  daily  acts  are  matters  of  habit; 
if  the  habits  are  firmly  fixed,  their  psycho- 
logic counterpart  is  more  of  an  automatic 
nervous,  than  a  mental,  sort.  Many  of  our 
habits  and  customs  come  without  our  con- 
sciousness— without  our  knowledge  of  how 
or  why.  Some  of  them  we  plan  and  deter- 
mine. Impelled  by  something  to  create 
them,  we  start  about  it,  and,  little  by  little, 
by  our  volition  and  the  repetition  of  the 
activities,  they  come  into  existence — the 
habits  are  formed.  This  is  education  in  a 
broad  way.  But  we  stumble  upon  some  of 
them;  they  come  unbidden;  they  grow  up 
by  some  unnoticed  mental  influence  that  is 
undirected  and  spontaneous.  In  the  first 
case  the  psychologic  counterpart  precedes 
consciously;  in  the  second  the  habit  comes 
apparently  first,  and  seems  to  develop  the 
other,  but  does  not,  and  is  really  created  by 
it. 

Mostly,  our  clothes  are  the  result  of  cus- 
tom— of  fashion.  We  wear  them  because 
others  do,  or  have  worn  them,  and  we  never 
order  the  seasonal  changes;  they  are 
ordered  for  us  by  others,  whom  we,  in  the 

1 88 


THE  PSYCHOLOGY  OF  THE  CORSET 

main,  are  wholly  ignorant  of,  by  somebody 
— anybody — who  can,  like  a  new  self-consti- 
tuted ruler,  get  control  of  the  masses.  They 
are  usually  the  shrewd  and  enterprising 
manufacturers  and  wholesalers  of  goods  and 
clothes.  We,  the  people,  are  as  helpless  in 
the  arrangement  of  the  styles  we  wear  (ex- 
cept within  comparatively  narrow  limits)  as 
we  are  of  the  air  we  breathe  or  the  temper- 
ature we  endure.  We  are  bidden,  and  near 
or  afar  off,  like  docile  children,  we  obey; 
and,  except  the  few  who  segregate  them- 
selves from  the  mass  of  people  by  their 
oddity,  we  obey  as  well  as  we  can. 

Why  we  do  certain  things,  especially 
those  that  affect  our  personal  weal  and  that 
of  the  community,  constitutes  a  most  inter- 
esting as  well  as  a  profitable  study.  But  we 
can  never  completely  solve  the  problem;  it 
is  so  complex  a  task  that  we  can  only  work 
toward  a  solution.  And  the  ultimate 
genesis  of  fashions,  and  what  they  lead  us 
to  do  and  refrain  from,  make  no  inconsider- 
able part  of  the  vast  problem  of  our  social 
existence. 

Our  daily  acts  may  be  divided,  crudely, 
into  those  which  concern  the  care  and  con- 
dition of  our  bodies,  and  those  that  connect 
us  with  others  in  the   life  and  business  of 

189 


THE  PSYCHOLOGY  OF  THE  CORSET 

the  world.  Yet  these  two  divisions  are 
closely  united  to  each  other,  and  we  can 
never  estimate  either  of  them  entirely  apart 
from  the  other.  The  nature  and  growth,  the 
care  and  carriage  of  our  bodies  have  to  do 
first  with  our  comfort  mentally  and  phys- 
ically, and  therefore  also  with  our  relations 
to  the  world;  and  clothes  are  a  large  factor 
in  the  consummation. 

Few  things  in  the  care  of  our  bodies  affect 
our  weal  more  than  our  customs  as  to 
clothes.  Clothes  touch  not  merely  the 
physical  self,  but  the  social  and  ethical  life 
as  truly.  The  foot-binding  of  the  Chinese 
is  a  striking  example,  but  none  will  say  that 
the  effect  of  the  custom  on  the  Chinese  na- 
tion is  confined  to  the  bodies  of  the  women 
whose  feet  are  bound.  It  concerns  as  well 
their  social  and  political  relations,  and  de- 
termines, in  many  cases,  their  happiness  or 
misery  for  life — physical  pain  if  their  feet 
are  bound;  social  punishment  if  they  are 
not.  Attempts  to  do  away  with  the  custom 
have  found  their  greatest  obstacle  in  the 
social  ostracism  that  threatens  any  woman 
who  appears  with  normal  feet. 

The  universal  ambition  is,  of  course,  so  to 
manage  the  human  body,  so  to  clothe,  feed, 
groom  and  care  for  it,  as  to  conserve  its  ex- 

190 


THE  PSYCHOLOGY  OF  THE  CORSET 

istence  and  comfort  for  the  longest  time. 
In  our  efforts  to  do  this  we  are  guilty  of 
many  foibles  and  some  sins,  and  the  offences 
against  the  physical  body  sometimes  tend, 
apparently,  to  spiritual  growth,  as  phys- 
iologic care  of  the  body  may  threaten 
social  degradation.  We  are  different  from 
the  Chinese;  whether  we  are  better  than 
they  is  a  question. 

A  study  of  the  corset  is  instructive,  as  a 
study  of  the  hats,  shoes,  gloves  or  collars  of 
men  would  be,  or  the  regulations  of  cookery 
and  meal-times,  or  the  kind  of  beds  that 
people  sleep  in.  But  the  corset  is  more  in- 
structive than  these,  because  it  is  a  device 
that  touches  more  the  psychologic  life,  and 
makes  and  unmakes  its  wearer  in  more  ways. 

If  we  consider  the  garment  from  the  stand- 
point of  its  usefulness,  we  shall  discover  a 
number  of  interesting  truths.  They  obtain 
with  many  other  garments  and  ornaments, 
but  not  with  all  of  them.  One  of  the  car- 
dinal reasons  for  the  corset  is  that  it  adds  to 
beauty  and  grace  of  form.  It  is  said  that 
fleshy  women  show  their  embonpoint  less  if 
they  wear  a  corset,  which  is  a  sufificient 
reason  for  them.  Then,  many  women  insist 
that  convenience  is  a  large  consideration  in 
favor  of  the  corset;    their  skirts,  the  bands 

191 


THE  PSYCHOLOGY  OF  THE  CORSET 

of  which  would  otherwise  annoy  them,  may 
be  hung  from  it.  The  waist  of  a  gown  can 
be  better  fitted  over  it,  and  a  well-fitting 
waist  is  the  starting  point  of  a  harmonious 
costume.  From  it  a  skirt  can  be  adjusted; 
and  sleeves  and  various  neck  and  throat 
decorations  may  be  added — all  of  which 
would  be  unavailing  with  a  shabby  looking 
waist.  Given  one  central  and  ideal  element 
of  grace  and  beauty  in  a  costume  and  every- 
thing else  may  be  made  to  harmonize. 

But  the  most  common  reason  a  woman 
offers  for  wearing  a  corset,  when  it  is  sug- 
gested that  she  should  lay  it  aside  after 
years  of  use,  is  that  it  is  a  means  of  support 
for  her  body;  that  it  is  comforting  to  her 
sensations;  that  if  she  lays  it  aside  she  has 
a  feeling  of  physical  fatigue  and  lack  of  sup- 
port that  is  almost  unbearable.  This  argu- 
ment is  sound,  without  a  question,  for  any 
woman  who  has  worn  a  corset  for  a  year 
probably  finds  that  on  laying  it  aside  she 
feels  a  want  of  support  that  is  always  dis- 
agreeable and  may  be  painful.  Men  as 
well  as  women  have  testified  to  this  fact.  A 
distinguished  scientist  of  England  many 
years  ago  wore  a  corset  for  a  few  months, 
and  then  discovered  that  it  took  him  twice 
as  many  months  to  get  used  to  doing  with- 

192 


THE  PSYCHOLOGY  OF  THE  CORSET 

out  it.  For  long  weeks  he  complained  of  a 
sensation  as  though  his  body  was  not  quite 
strong  enough  to  hold  itself  erect. 

Fashion  is  the  most  potent  reason  for  the 
corset.  That  the  fashion  had  its  origin 
largely  in  a  desire  for  cosmetic  effect,  the 
conservation  of  beauty  and  grace,  is  true 
enough.  But  that  is  not  what  compels, 
although  it  may  encourage,  the  adoption  of 
this  garment.  It  is  the  fact  that  others  of 
her  set,  or  those  she  would  emulate,  wear  it, 
which  compels  nearly  every  girl  to  get  her- 
self into  a  corset  at  the  earliest  permissible 
age.  Fashion  inflicts  upon  us  many  degrees 
of  slavery.  The  fashion  once  established 
must  be  followed,  even  if  it  binds  our  bodies 
or  our  feet,  our  throats  or  our  hands.  It 
requires  a  large  order  of  courage  to  resist, 
even  when  the  thing  is  harmful.  And  no 
argument  for  health  is  so  irresistible  as  to 
be  told  that  you  look  undressed  or  slouchy 
without  a  particular  garment  or  style.  Such 
a  criticism  is  to  many  a  soul  as  severe  and 
heart-breaking  as  an  accusation  of  black  sin. 

There  are  many  standards  of  beauty.  The 
shape  of  the  corset,  the  artificial  thing  used 
to  encase  the  body,  constitutes  one  standard. 
The  theory,  of  course,  is  that  woman's  form 
ought  to  have  that  particular  shape;  that  it 

193 


THE  PSYCHOLOGY  OF  THE  CORSET 

is  the  typical  form  and  therefore  ideal.  The 
woman  who  possesses  that  ideal  form  needs 
no  corset  for  beauty's  sake.  The  corset  is 
a  standard,  and  its  shape  should  be — and 
often  is — based  on  that  of  the  nude  body 
which  artists  and  anatomists  have,  with  a 
fair  measure  of  unanimity,  agreed  on  as 
nearest  perfection.  That  form  is  a  thing  of 
surpassing  beauty,  and  no  artificial  covering 
of  it  can  ever  enhance  its  charm  of  lines. 
For  its  comfort,  and  that  it  should  be  hid- 
den, clothes  are  required;  but  never  for  its 
grace  or  beauty. 

The  corset  is  evolved  from  a  desire  to  per- 
petuate that  form,  and  to  give  all  an  oppor- 
tunity to  simulate  it.  The  woman  who 
lacks  the  ideal  form  naturally  covets  it. 
To  her  it  is  a  happy  circumstance  that  she 
may  wrap  herself  in  an  artificial  case,  and 
to  the  world  actually  display  the  charm  she 
covets.  Most  of  us  live  and  labor  under  the 
load  of  some  physical  defect  or  asymmetry 
we  would  be  glad  to  be  rid  of,  to  the  end 
that  we  might  more  nearly  approach  the 
ideal  physical  body.  It  is  a  hump  or  a 
wart,  or  some  angularity,  or  a  vice  of  color 
or  of  hair.  So,  failing  as  most  of  us  do,  in 
the  classical  perfections,  we  take  greedily  to 
measures  that  allow  us    to  simulate    them. 

194 


THE  PSYCHOLOGY  OF  THE  CORSET 

And  could  anything  more  happily  accom- 
plish this  purpose  than  the  corset?  Once 
within  it,  the  form  has  (if  the  corset  is  cor- 
rect) all  the  right  curves  and  proportions, 
and  none  of  its  own  angles  and  imperfec- 
tions. Of  course,  it  we  stop  to  reflect,  we 
know  this  is,  as  to  a  great  number,  quite 
impossible;  that  inside  the  corset  there  often 
must  be  ugliness,  but  it  seems  otherwise — and 
frequently  in  our  blundering  day  to  seem  is 
the  instinctive  end. 

By  good  dentistry  we  can  help  a  little 
toward  the  ideal;  the  razor  may  abolish  an 
untidy  beard;  and  we  may,  by  waves  and 
bangs  cover  up  somewhat  the  defects  we 
think  v/e  wot  of  in  our  own  appearance. 
But  hair-dye  and  beard-coloring  are  vulgar 
aids  at  best.  We  cannot  hide  our  big  feet 
and  hands,  nor  straighten  up  our  shoulders 
or  backs;  and  our  walking  gait  cannot  by  any 
possibility  be  hidden  or  much  changed. 

Skirts  have  fortunately  restricted  to  the 
masculine  half  of  us  the  public  announce- 
ment of  the  deformity  of  bow-legs,  and  it  is 
no  wonder  that  woman  should  be  ready  to 
still  further  take  advantage  of  her  pos- 
sibilities, and  cover  her  body  with  the  out- 
ward evidence  of  perfect  symmetry  and 
the  ideal  curves  and  proportions. 

195 


THE  PSYCHOLOGY  OF  THE  CORSET 

Women  have  better  and  more  trustworthy- 
taste  as  to  the  lines  of  beauty  than  men 
have;  they  think  of  such  things  more  than 
men  can,  and  inharmony  rasps  their  nature 
more.  It  is  not  strange  then  that  they 
should  be  avid  to  appear  to  have  the  curves 
of  the  Venus  that  is  the  vision  of  us  all. 
Here  is  a  part  of  her  form  hidden  from  the 
world  (save  at  fashionable  functions);  and 
woman  may  create  for  it,  for  the  average 
sum  of  two  dollars,  the  shape  that  is  divine, 
and  that  shall  delicately  hint  its  presence 
through  any  and  all  drapery.  She  will  do 
it,  and  to  blame  her  for  it  is  hardly  gener- 
ous. 

I  know  the  fashion  may  fail  her  in  these 
efforts,  and  perchance  her  figure  is  such  that 
she  cannot  accomplish  all  she  desires  in 
this  way.  But  the  impulse  exists  and  per- 
sists, and  is,  in  part,  the  basis  and  unuttered 
justification  of  the  corset  fashion. 

It  is  true  of  all  fashions  that  sooner  or 
later  they  show  aberrations.  By  the 
various  whims  and  tendencies  of  the  mind, 
they  acquire  extremes  and  excesses.  And 
these  often  grow  out  of  the  human  impulse 
to  imitate  or  exceed  someone  else,  or  out  of 
the  misfortune  of  those  who  are  physically 
unable  to  follow  the  ideal   of  the  fashion. 

196 


THE  PSYCHOLOGY  OF  THE  CORSET 

The  corset  is  a  means  of  hiding  the  propor- 
tions of  a  fleshy  woman.  But  her  corset  is 
large,  its  size  is  still  relatively  great;  there- 
fore, large  size  becomes  a  positive  misfor- 
tune; there  is  a  rising  gratification  in  every 
inch  of  reduction  in  the  circumference. 
The  smaller  corset,  as  compared  to  the 
greater  one,  indicates  a  nearer  approach  to 
the  ideal  form.  Smallness  therefore  be- 
comes desirable  by  comparison.  The 
woman  who  can  wear  a  corset  of  the  average 
size  is  proud  when  she  compares  herself  with 
her  larger  neighbor.  The  latter,  from  her 
standpoint,  laments,  while  the  slim  woman 
gently  glories  over  both  of  them.  Thus 
with  many  people  comeliness  ceases  to  be, 
and  size  becomes  the  only  standard  of  com- 
parison; and  so  a  woman  is  not  merely 
proud  to  have  a  corset  smaller  than  her 
neighbor's,  but  she  is  proud  to  have  one 
considerably  smaller  than  the  average 
diameter  of  woman's  waist.  It  flatters  us 
just  a  little  to  be  able  to  do  a  thing  that 
others  cannot  accomplish;  and,  to  get  into 
a  corset  six  inches  in  diameter,  is  an  accom- 
plishment that  few  women  have. 

Among  women  it  is  interesting  to  see  how 
the  size  of  their  waists  is  kept  in  mind  and 
memory  by  each  other,  and  what  an  event  it 

197 


THE  PSYCHOLOGY  OF  THE  CORSET 

is  when  one  grows  larger  or  smaller.  They 
remember  these,  as  tall  men  keep  account 
of  their  height,  and  boys  of  their  feats  of 
dexterity.  A  woman  will  sometimes  re- 
member to  her  eightieth  year  the  size  of  her 
own  and  others'  waists  during  the  third  dec- 
ade of  their  lives;  and  the  records  of 
changes  as  they  pass  the  mid-point  in  life, 
are  something  both  pathetic  and  amusing. 
Once,  while  I  read  a  book  in  a  moving  rail- 
way train,  there  was  a  hum  of  conversation 
among  three  women  sitting  opposite  me.  I 
was  suddenly  startled  to  hear  one  of  them 
say  with  dramatic  manner  and  intense 
voice:  "What  do  you  think!"  The  others 
waited,  with  wide-eyed  expectancy,  to  hear 
the  fulmination  that  was  to  come.  And 
this  is  what  it  was:  "Could  you  believe  it, 
that  Mary  Wonder's  waist  measures  twenty- 
four  inches?"  The  dual  exclamation  of  sur- 
prise from  the  listeners  clearly  told  that 
they  could  not;  and  the  satisfaction  on  the 
face  of  the  one  who  had  spoken,  showed  the 
egoistic  joy  that  comes  of  having  uttered  a 
momentous  thing.  She  looked  as  happy 
and  self-sufficient  as  if  she  had  created  the 
thing  she  told  of. 

We  see  the  same  out-cropping  of  human 
nature  in  other  directions;    for  example,  as 

198 


THE  PSYCHOLOGY  OF  THE  CORSET 

to  the  size  of  shoes  and  of  gloves,  and  the 
cut  of  other  garments.  Nobody  could  for  a 
moment  defend  a  very  small  foot  as  a  thing 
of  beauty  on  a  medium-sized  person.  The 
narrow-shouldered  people  by  padding  give 
themselves  more  nearly  the  appearance  of 
the  average,  and  so  there  grows  up  a  fash- 
ion of  broad  shoulders,  and  the  seeming 
of  them,  which  is  by  and  by  carried  to  such 
extremes  that  finally,  having  developed 
enormous  excrescences,  the  fashion  falls  by 
the  weight  of  disgust  which  it  creates  in  the 
public  mind. 

I  once  knew  a  good  woman  who  had  a  very 
long,  slim  hand.  She  could  not  buy  gloves 
to  fit  her;  if  they  were  correct  in  length  they 
were  slack  about  the  fingers,  but  very  com- 
fortable; if  they  fitted  firmly  about  the  fin- 
gers they  were  too  short  to  reach  to  the 
wrist.  Did  she  wear  the  comfortable  ones? 
She  wore  the  uncomfortable  ones,  that  were 
beautiful  about  the  fingers  and  made  them 
look  small  and  neat,  notwithstanding  a  most 
awkward  fit  about  the  wrists  where  they 
could  be  more  easily  hidden.  And  I  had  a 
friend  who,  as  boy  and  man,  suffered  from 
cold  feet  and  chilblain  for  more  than  thirty 
winters — and  who  had  always  sought  for 
means    to  keep   his    feet   warm — before   he 

199 


THE  PSYCHOLOGY  OF  THE  CORSET 

could  evolve  to  the  point  of  wearing  loose 
shoes  and  large  overshoes.  He  had  often 
tried  on  such  at  the  shoe  stores,  but  each 
time,  as  he  looked  down  at  the  large  size  of 
his  clothed  feet,  his  courage  failed  him,  and 
he  bought  the  close-fitting  things  that  tickled 
his  vanity  or  saved  his  humiliation,  but  tor- 
tured his  feet.  In  this  manner  he  chose 
physical  rather  than  mental  humiliation  for 
a  third  of  a  century,  before  he  learned  a  bet- 
ter lesson.  Lately,  the  foot-ball  fashion  or 
some  other  motive  has  led  the  true  Ameri- 
can boy  to  be  rather  proud  of  his  large 
shoes,  showing  another  swing  of  the  pendu- 
lum. 

The  woman's  form  becomes  so  used  to  the 
pressure  of  the  corset  that  the  wearer 
acquires  a  new  definition  of  tightness  and 
pressure.  She  will  declare  that  her  corset  is 
not  tight,  when  to  a  man  or  a  child  it  would 
be,  and  neither  the  man  nor  the  child  would 
willingly  wear  clothing  about  the  waist  that 
would  squeeze  so  much.  And  she  is  per- 
fectly candid  and  consciously  truthful  in  her 
declarations.  Once  a  beautiful  young 
woman  was  getting  a  trifle  stout,  and  her 
doctor  quizzed  her  as  to  whether  her  corset 
was  not  too  tight.  She  declared  that  she 
never  wore  it  tight;  that  it  was  always  loose 

200 


THE  PSYCHOLOGY  OF  THE  CORSET 

and  gave  her  abundance  of  room,  and,  to 
prove  this,  she  said  that  when  she  took  her 
corset  off  and  put  her  gown  on  without  it, 
she  could  easily  bring  the  gown  together 
within  two  inches!  It  did  not  occur  to  her 
that  she  had  said  anything  funny  until  the 
doctor  burst  into  laughter.  Thus  the  indi- 
vidual standpoint  comes  to  create  for  us  new 
meanings  for  words  that  are  used  to  express 
the  common  sense  and  common  sensations 
of  mankind.  Hence  the  manifold  and 
variant  meanings  of  words  as  shown  by  the 
dictionary.  Words  have  a  history,  and  this 
illuminates  the  history  of  the  social  and  per- 
sonal life  of  the  human  race,  and  shows  its 
steady  evolution. 

Not  every  woman  would  have  gone  to  the 
extreme  of  this  young  person,  but  corset 
wearers  as  a  whole,  have  acquired  a  defini- 
tion of  their  own  to  express  the  snugness  of 
the  clothing  about  the  trunk  of  the  body. 
They  are  not  uncandid  about  it,  as  a  rule, 
and  do  not  mean  to  be  inaccurate,  and  do 
not  know  that  they  are — if  they  are.  Who 
shall  say  that  a  definition  of  one-half  the 
race  shall  be  discredited  or  degraded  by 
that  of  the  other  half?  Lexicographers  and 
grammarians  may  pretend  that  definitions 
are  thus  and  so,  and  must  be  so  maintained, 

201 


THE  PSYCHOLOGY  OF  THE  CORSET 

but  they  cannot  maintain  them;  and  they 
are  forced  to  record  changes  as  the  people 
vary  in  their  usages.  And  the  growth  and 
evolution  of  the  language  come  largely  from 
the  impulsive  and  hap-hazard  inventions  of 
the  common  people. 

There  is  still  another  reason  for  the  habit 
of  tight  lacing,  which  has  great  philosophic 
interest.  It  probably  applies  to  only  a  few 
women.  To  the  exceptional  woman  it  is 
not  for  grace  nor  out  of  regard  to  the  morbid 
extreme  of  fashion  blindly  followed  that  she 
tugs  at  her  laces.  It  is  rather  to  the  end 
that  some  particular  woman  or  the  imper- 
sonal woman  shall  not  have  the  chance  of 
saying  that  her  waist  has  grown  larger,  or 
is  not  smaller,  than  that  of  some  other 
woman,  or  than  some  standard  of  compari- 
son. In  the  aggregate  many  women  are 
victims,  and  long-suffering  ones,  of  the  fool- 
ish ideal  betrayed  by  the  hackneyed  phrase 
that  begins  with:  "She  shall  never  have  it 
to  say."  These  expressions  have  a  familiar 
ring:  "She  shall  never  have  it  to  say  that  I 
asked  favors  of  her,"  or,  "that  I  complained 
of  my  lot,"  or  "that  my  house  was  untidy," 
or  "that  my  complexion  was  worse  than 
hers,"  or  "that  my  children  were  dirty" — ■ 
and  so    on,  interminably.     Women  live  and 

202 


THE  PSYCHOLOGY  OF  THE  CORSET 

die,  and  die  early  and  in  sorrow,  worn  out 
by  loyalty  to  this  sort  of  a  standard.  It  is 
a  common  standard,  and  concerns  itself 
more  with  the  non-essential,  even  trivial 
things  of  life,  than  with  the  larger  virtues  of 
character.  Its  application  to  the  question 
of  the  size  of  woman's  waist  is  only  one  of 
its  hundreds  of  uses.  It  is  often  founded  in 
pique  or  ambition,  in  envy  or  jealousy;  it 
has  existed  for  ages  and  probably  will  con- 
tinue through  our  present  phase  of  civiliza- 
tion. 

Similarly  interesting  is  the  experience  of 
the  masculine  Sophomore,  or  of  the  com- 
mon dude,  with  his  tall  collar  in  vogue  in 
this  beginning  of  a  new  century.  Ask  him 
why  he  wears  the  ugly,  uncomfortable  thing, 
and,  to  avoid  a  confession  of  his  enslave- 
ment, he  will  tell  you  a  little  tale  (which  in 
his  heart  he  knows  to  be  a  mass  of  fibs) 
about  his  uncomely  neck  and  the  necessity 
of  hiding  it,  and  of  the  ease  with  which  he 
wears  the  collar.  Since  boys  began  to  ex- 
plain how  they  had  to  go  a-fishing  and 
couldn't  help  it,  or  were  positively  pre- 
vented from  getting  home  early,  there  has 
not  been  a  more  amusing  variety  of  prevari- 
cation. It  is  well  that  other  persons  do  not 
say  such    uncomplimentary    things    of    the 

203 


THE  PSYCHOLOGY  OF  THE  CORSET 

boy's  neck.  If  they  did,  he  would  discover 
at  once  what  manly  curves  and  graceful  di- 
mensions it  has;  for  the  negligee  attire  of  an 
outing  makes  him  stand  before  the  glass  in 
expansive  delight  to  see  his  form  reflected 
back  to  him,  and  the  neck  is  no  small  part 
of  its  admitted  beauty. 

Nobody  can  look  at  these  aspects  of  life 
in  all  their  bearings  without  being  convinced 
that,  for  foolishness  in  the  small  things,  as 
well  as  the  large  ones,  neither  sex  of  our 
august  family  can  boast  a  monopoly,  or 
even  claim  any  special  superiority  over  the 
other. 

One  of  the  most  interesting  phases  of  this 
question  of  psychology  is  shown  by  the 
various  estimates  we  have  of  how  other 
people  regard  us,  and  the  way  we  balance 
our  own  estimates  against  theirs.  The  doc- 
trine that  we  cannot  see  ourselves  as  others 
do,  is  very  old  and  altogether  true.  But 
there  are  degrees  of  this  disability;  some- 
times it  is  only  partial,  and  we  occasionally 
succeed  in  stealing  round  quietly  to  a  spot 
near  the  point  of  vision  of  some  other 
people.  Women,  as  a  class,  understand 
fairly  well  how  they  regard  each  other's  re- 
lation to  the  corset.  And  a  girl  with  an 
extremely    waspish     waist     is,     I    believe, 

204 


THE  PSYCHOLOGY  OF  THE  CORSET 

always  regarded  by  most  women  with  a 
feeling  of  pity.  But  the  sense  of  triumph 
which  the  girl  herself  feels  in  her  achieve- 
ment over  others  of  her  sex,  may  wholly 
smother  her  consciousness  of  what  other 
women  think  of  her.  And  this  is  not  sur- 
prising. In  a  hundred  ways  we  see  the 
egoistic  feeling,  the  sense  of  self-importance 
and  conceit,  covering  up  every  other  emo- 
tion, and  ignoring  the  feelings  and  interests 
of  others.  The  small  boy  with  his  toy  gun 
or  his  first  trousers;  the  same  boy,  older, 
with  his  first  cigarette,  and  later  with  some 
grown  man's  triumph,  are  only  stages  in  the 
same  life,  and  show  the  truth  equally, 

I  am  told  by  many  sensible  women  that 
it  is  a  common  belief  of  the  sex  that  small 
waists  are  pleasing  to  men.  And  I  have 
had  a  man's  curiosity  to  know  how  general 
this  belief  is,  for  it  seems  to  me  next  to  im- 
possible that  the  contrary  sentiment,  which 
is  practically  universal  among  men  of  all 
ages  and  shades  of  thought,  should  be  mis- 
understood by  women.  In  forty  years  of 
attentive  observation  of  the  talk  of  all  sorts 
of  normal  boys  and  men,  I  have  never  known 
the  diminutive  size  of  a  woman's  waist  to  be 
complimented  by  one  of  them.  On  the  con- 
trary,   most   uncomplimentary   remarks    are 

205 


THE  PSYCHOLOGY  OF  THE  CORSET 

often  made  by  them  about  the  pinched 
midriffs  of  womankind. 

We  are  apt  to  forget  that  the  feminine 
estimate  of  women  is  quite  different  from 
the  masculine,  and  vice  versa.  The  ques- 
tion of  the  hour-glass  corset  illustrates  it. 
Men  never  cease  to  wonder  how  women 
can  possibly  admire  a  certain  man;  and 
women  query  as  much  or  more  in  a  reverse 
direction. 

The  differing  points  of  view  of  the  two 
sexes  is  shown  in  nothing  better  than  the 
diverse  ways  men  and  women  regard  the 
dressing  of  themselves  for  fun  in  the  clothes 
of  the  other.  To  women  it  is  a  great  event, 
to  be  amused  and  laughed  at  with  the 
greatest  glee — often  to  the  wonder  of  men. 
To  men  it  is  very  little  of  an  event,  rather  a 
passing  curiosity,  and  is  never  treasured 
afterward  as  anything  striking.  Even  when 
they,  as  college  students,  get  up  a  comic 
opera,  and  take  all  the  women's  parts,  their 
interest  in  this  phase  of  the  performance, 
beyond  a  desire  for  success,  is  largely  in 
the  pleasure  it  gives  their  feminine  friends, 
and  the  comradery  with  them  incident  to  the 
preparations.  Would  any  set  of  normal 
men  present  such  a  play  to  an  exclusive 
audience  of  men?      But  women  do  the  re- 

206 


THE  PSYCHOLOGY  OF  THE  CORSET 

verse  of  this,  and  enjoy  it.  What  is  the 
basis  of  the  difference?  Is  it  to  some  degree 
the  greater  social  restraints  to  adventure 
that  surround  woman,  or  is  it  innate? 

The  mental  pictures  that  are  projected  in 
the  minds  of  women  and  men  on  the  sugges- 
tion of  the  affairs  of  a  formal  wedding,  are  as 
different  as  possible;  and  they  cannot  all  be 
due  to  the  difference  of  meaning  the  wed- 
ding has  for  the  two  sexes.  For  men,  the 
prospect  of  the  finery,  the  flowers,  the  pow- 
der, and  the  dressing  of  the  bride  and  the 
bridesmaids,  is  a  matter  to  be  endured  for 
the  sake  of  the  other  sex,  but  always  a  trifle 
fatiguing.  To  women  these  things  are  food 
and  drink,  and  the  wedding  procession  is  a 
blazing  joy.  They  are  not  dampened  by  the 
slow  and  solemn  tread  of  the  bride  with  her 
guards,  each  foot  lifted  carefully,  slowly 
projected  forward,  held  in  the  air  for  a 
moment,  then  put  down  with  a  motion  that 
no  effort  can  quite  free  from  the  quality  of  a 
jerk;  the  head  thrown  back  the  while,  and 
the  face  directed  forward,  with  cheeks 
blanched  and  shrunken,  and  the  whole 
aspect  as  though  she  had  just  come  out  of 
a  prison  where  she  had  been  starved  for  a 
week,  and  were  marching  to  her  execu- 
tion.    To  men,  this  sometimes  has  the  sug- 

207 


THE  PSYCHOLOGY  OF  THE  CORSET 

gestion  of  tragedy;  but  many  women  will 
seek  the  best  seats  to  see,  even  at  the  ex- 
pense of  courtesy,  and  crane  their  necks  to 
get  a  vision  of  the  whole  spectacle  that  shall 
be  complete,  and  will  miss  nothing,  and  re- 
member long  afterward  the  minutest  details 
of  it  all. 

One  effect  of  wearing  good  clothes,  or 
clothes  that  one  likes,  is  to  create  a  sense  of 
comfort  and  self-respect;  which  sensations 
may  be  good  if  they  are  not  mixed  with  a 
feeling  of  pride  and  bumptiousness  that  is 
illaudable.  This  fact  is  emphasized  by  the 
converse  experience  of  us  all  in  the  distract- 
ing uneasiness  with  which  we  bear  the  feel- 
ing that  our  clothes  misfit  us,  or  are  untidy 
or  not  appropriate  to  the  occasion.  We 
cannot  think  or  talk  connectedly.  The 
greatest  eloquence  and  the  divinest  music 
alike  fail  to  fix  our  attention,  or  wrest  it 
from  the  chagrin  about  the  clothes  that 
cover  us.  Even  a  lovely  face  and  gentle 
words  sometimes  fail. 

Years  ago  I  had  a  friend  who  more  than 
once  roused  himself  from  the  melancholy  of 
chronic  invalidism  by  getting  up  from  his 
bed,  putting  on  his  best  suit  of  clothes,  and 
going  out  for  a  walk.  He  said  he  always 
felt  a  sense  of  uplifting  from  it  that  he  could 

208 


THE  PSYCHOLOGY  OF  THE  CORSET 

never  have  in  his  common  clothes.  And  I 
know  good  men,  who,  after  a  day  of  taxing 
business  cares,  go  home  and  put  on  evening 
dress  before  their  dinner,  and  declare  they 
feel  rested  in  consequence.  The  habit  of 
wearing  better  clothes  on  Sunday  furnishes  a 
distinct  portion  of  the  benefits  of  the  one 
day  of  rest.  It  is  a  civilizing  influence  of 
no  mean  sort.  And  its  force  is  wholly 
psychologic;  it  helps  mentally  to  a  higher 
standard.  Better  clothes  seem  to  go  with 
better  demeanor,  and  so  men  behave  better 
in  them,  and  think  of  higher  things,  as  one 
always,  to  some  degree,  grasps  a  mental 
mood  by  assuming  the  physical  attitude  that 
usually  is  linked  with  it.  To  force  them- 
selves to  behave  decently  helps  most  people, 
if  only  a  little,  to  be  decent. 

Does  not  the  corset  help  women,  men- 
tally, to  the  same  end?  I  am  sure  I  have 
heard  many  a  woman  apologize  for  the  un- 
tidiness of  her  clothes,  and  say  she  was  not 
dressed,  when  she  looked  perfection  in  this 
respect,  and  my  intuitions  prompted  the  sus- 
picion that  her  only  trouble  was  the  lack  of 
a  corset.  The  touch  of  this  magic  contriv- 
ance gives  her  a  feeling  of  being  dressed  and 
proper,  that  relieves  her  of  embarrassment. 
To  be  sure,   sometimes   it  leads  women  to 

209 


THE  PSYCHOLOGY  OF  THE  CORSET 

rely  on  its  lulling  influence  too  much,  and 
to  forget  that  they  may  have  an  untidy  gown 
or  person.  But  I  doubt  that  it  ever  makes 
one  more  untidy  than  she  would  be  without 
it;  and  I  should  like  to  believe  that  it  does, 
by  its  subtle  influence  upon  the  mind  and 
life,  make  every  woman  who  wears  it  a  little 
better,  as  well  as  a  little  happier,  than  she 
otherwise  could  be. 

It  is  unnatural  to  believe  that  the  influ- 
ence of  this  garment  is  lowering  upon  the 
soul  of  the  wearer,  when  its  very  object  is 
largely  the  realization  of  an  ideal  of  beauty 
whose  normal  issue  is  an  elevation  in  spirit 
and  intention,  and  therefore  better  conduct. 


210 


The    Physical    Basis   of 
Expertness 


Physical  Basis  of  Expertness 


Expertness  is  the  ability  to  do  difficult 
things  with  unusual  deftness  and  skill;  or  it 
is  unusual  knowledge  of  some  difficult  sub- 
ject. Then  we  call  it  learning.  It  is  an 
acquired  power  but  people  attain  it  in  vary- 
ing degrees  and  with  different  rates  of  prog- 
ress. It  is  a  power  that  is  never  manifestly 
inborn;  no  expertness  is  discoverable  in  the 
human  subject  at  birth,  except  in  crying, 
and  in  the  simplest  acts  necessary  to  take 
and  swallow  food.  Man  must  learn  by  slow 
degrees  to  be  adept  and  skilful  and  wise,  if 
he  ever  attains  to  such  superiority.  In  the 
lower  animals  we  see  the  same  quality  to  a 
surprising  degree,  only  it  is  nearly  all  in- 
born, not  acquired  in  the  lifetime  of  the  ani- 
mal. Indeed,  it  is  often  questioned  that 
animals  ever  learn  of  themselves  to  do  any 
of  the  usual  acts  and  functions  that  are 
necessary  for  their  existence.  The  bird  is 
never  taught  to  build  a  nest,  nor  the  bee  to 

213 


PHYSICAL  BASIS  OF  EXPERTNESS 

gather  the  materials  for  honey  or  to  make 
honey-comb,  nor  the  beaver  to  make  a  dam; 
but  these  products  of  remarkable  skill  are 
made  without  a  previous  model  and  wholly 
without  instruction.  Moreover,  they  are 
made  the  first  time  by  each  animal  with  a 
perfection  that  is  apparently  never  improved 
upon.  It  is  difficult  to  discover  that  any 
subsequent  work  of  this  sort  ever  shows  the 
slightest  improvement  over  the  first, although 
scientific  investigation  and  measurements 
have,  I  believe,  shown  that  an  increase  of 
skill  does  come  in  some  cases  of  repeated 
attempts  of  the  animal  in  its  peculiar  tasks. 
The  bird's  third  nest  may  therefore  be  a 
trifle  better  than  its  first. 

This  expertness  in  animals  is  called 
instinct,  but,  as  an  expression  of  animal 
function,  it  is  without  question  the  same 
thing  in  essence  as  the  skill  that  man 
acquires  through  patient  effort  and  repeated 
trials. 

There  is  a  strong  economic  reason  why  the 
young  of  the  lower  animals  should  be  born 
with  a  ready-made  skill  to  do  the  things 
necessary  for  their  own  protection  and  perpet- 
uation; and  they  never  have  instinctive  skill 
outside  of  this  narrow  field;  there  is  no  need 
of    it.       The    child   of   man,   on   the  other 

214 


PHYSICAL  BASIS  OF  EXPERTNESS 

hand,  is  born  under  the  safeguarding  of  the 
intellectual  prevision  and  support  of  the 
race,  and  has  no  such  necessity;  so,  beyond 
the  simple  instincts  to  cry,  and  to  suckle 
and  swallow,  its  expertness  must  all  be 
gained  by  effort,  by  observation,  mimetism 
and  instruction.  The  effort  that  is  neces- 
sary to  acquire  expertness  varies  for  the 
different  maneuvers  and  fields  of  knowledge 
and  varies  with  the  individuals  of  the  race; 
some  learn  in  one  direction  easily,  others 
in  another;  some  never  learn  anything 
easily.  The  general  capacity  to  acquire 
knov/ledge  and  skill  varies  among  people  as 
much  as  they  differ  in  their  physical  appear- 
ance and  characteristics.  Some  learn  easily 
to  play  a  musical  instrument  with  marvelous 
skill;  others  master  by  slow  degrees,  and 
never  to  perfection,  the  simplest  necessary 
acts  of  their  daily  lives.  But  what  expert- 
ness soever  comes  to  an  individual  is  a  gift 
never  foreshadowed  by  powers  that  he  has 
at  birth.  That  is  a  moment  of  life  when 
human  beings  are  alike  in  their  utter  help- 
lessness and  ignorance. 

But,  after  all,  the  skill  of  the  birds  and 
the  beavers  must  have  been  acquired.  Each 
of  their  generations  has  added  but  a  trifle  to 
it,  and  manifold  thousands  of  generations 

215 


PHYSICAL  BASIS  OF  EXPERTNESS 

must  have  been  required  to  bring  each  order 
of  animals  up  to  its  present  degree  of  ex- 
pertness.  It  was  in  the  inevitable  course  of 
nature  that  it  should  have  been  so;  the 
varieties  of  animals  that  had  most  skill 
could  best  resist  the  enemies  about  them 
and  so  survive;  those  with  less  capacity- 
would  go  to  the  wall  and  perish.  Whether 
from  accident  or  creative  design,  animals 
with  growing  skill  would  not  only  survive, 
but  by  the  forces  or  the  accidents  that 
helped  to  produce  it,  their  skill  would  tend 
to  grow  and  become  adjusted  more  and 
more  nicely  to  their  needs. 

The  wonder  of  the  growth  in  expertness 
among  animals  is  that  each  generation  of 
them  should  be  able  to  keep  and  hold  a 
large  part  of  the  trifle  that  it  could  attain  by 
itself,  and  to  transmit  this  to  its  offspring 
as  an  instinct;  so  that  to-day  we  see  many 
species  with  skill  that  is  not  only  marvel- 
ous in  its  qualities,  but  apparently  perfec- 
tion. Man  appears  to  have  no  such  power 
of  storing  up  and  transmitting  skill  in  this 
manner.  His  child  is  born  devoid  of  it  and 
must  learn  it  all  anew.  We  shall  see  pres- 
ently that  something  in  a  distant  way  akin 
to  this  storing  up  of  accumulated  power  and 
expertness  from    generation  to  generation, 

216 


PHYSICAL  BASIS  OF  EXPERTNESS 

belongs  to  the  human  race,  although  the 
fact  is  not  at  first  apparent. 

In  the  growth  of  the  acquired  expertness 
of  man,  one  and  the  same  progressive 
sequence  of  steps  must  occur  with  each  indi- 
vidual; and  it  is  a  course  of  repeated  trials, 
and  efforts  more  or  less  patient.  The  sim- 
ple and  most  necessary  acts  come  first,  like 
standing  and  walking,  and  the  use  of  the 
hands  from  curiosity,  and  for  the  physical 
needs  from  moment  to  moment.  Then  a 
larger  range  of  movements  is  learned;  those 
that  are  involved  and  interdependent,  like 
speech  and  handicraft,  in  which  something 
like  skill  begins  to  be  revealed.  Finally, 
the  race  is  differentiated  by  the  appearance 
of  varying  kinds  and  degrees  of  skill  among 
different  individuals,  and  so  there  results 
all  the  endless  variations  in  capacity  and 
power.  In  the  acquisition  of  ideas  and 
notions  similar  steps  succeed  each  other  as 
in  the  learning  of  manual  dexterity. 

The  conclusion  is  unavoidable,  the  mo- 
ment the  subject  of  expe;tness  in  man  is 
considered  carefully,  that  at  first  it  is  all 
mental,  and  that  afterward  a  part  of  it 
becomes  manual.  There  is  no  such  thing  as 
education  of  the  hands  and  feet  and  tongue 
alone;  rather  the  brain  learns  how  to  control 

217 


PHYSICAL  BASIS  OF  EXPERTNESS 

the  evolutions  of  the  body  through  the 
nervous  machinery  ;  then  the  muscle  skill 
comes  and  the  purely  intellectual  expertness 
as  well,  and  the  one  helps  the  other. 

The  first  step  in  the  building  up  of  deft- 
ness is  a  conscious  or  unconscious  voluntary 
act.  The  child  puts  one  foot  before  the 
other  in  his  first  effort  at  walking,  in  a 
movement  directed  by  his  will  and  with  the 
exercise  of  all  the  judgment  that  he  pos- 
sesses. Delighted  at  his  first  step  he  finds 
the  next  one  easier,  although  he  is  obliged 
to  direct  every  step  by  his  will  power.  But 
in  a  little  while,  he  is  walking  without  a 
thought  of  it,  and  is  not  consciously  using 
his  will;  mentally,  he  hardly  knows  he  is 
walking;  and  his  mind  is  now  given  to  some 
thought  or  evolution  or  other  volitional  act 
— perhaps  with  his  hands,  possibly  in  the 
use  of  some  tool  or  utensil,  or  in  trying  to 
frame  words  or  sing  or  whistle,  in  imitation 
of  somebody  whom  he  likes  to  imitate. 
Presently  he  reaches  a  point  where  he  can 
do  all  these  new  things  without  fixing  his 
attention  specially  on  each  step  of  them  in 
detail;  if  his  mental  attention  is  given  to 
them  it  is  for  the  purpose  of  greater  expert- 
ness, and  not  for  the  due  sequence  of  the 
steps  in  the  evolutions. 

218 


PHYSICAL  BASIS  OF  EXPERTNESS 

This  new    thing  that  has    happened,   we 
call  learning.  The  child  has  learned  to  walk; 
to    use    its    spoon   and   knife   and   fork;    to 
whittle,   throw  a  ball,  and  to  bat;    then  to 
write  his   language,  to  play  the  piano  and 
do  hundreds  of  other  things  as  easily;    and 
to   have    many   fixed    ideas    and    opinions. 
The  thing  that  has  occurred  in  his  experi- 
ence is  this:  the  brain  first  directed  each  act 
through  the  spinal  cord  and  other  nerve  cen- 
ters and  cells  connected  with  the  brain,  and 
the  nerves  that  control  the  muscles.     Each 
repetition  made  it  easier,  and  required  less 
brain  power  and  mental  attention;  each  one 
found  the  centers  and  cells  below  the  brain 
acting  more  independently  of  the  brain,  or, 
to  put  it  differently,  acting  in  the  same  way 
as  before,  but  with  less  and  less  supervision 
from  above— till,  finally,  they  executed  the 
several  evolutions  on  the  slightest  hint  from 
the  brain,  so  slight  sometimes  that  the  brain 
was  unaware,   and  could  not  remember  that 
the  hint  had  been  given.     When  this  point 
was    reached   the    movements  were    largely 
mechanical  or  automatic;    the  lower  centers 
in  this  mechanical   sort  of  a  way  had  come 
to  relieve  the  mind  of  the  necessity  of  giv- 
ing detailed   attention   to  these  acts.     The 
brain  was,  therefore,  left  free  to  give  its  best 

219 


PHYSICAL  BASIS  OF  EXPERTNESS 

power  of    attention   and    concentration   to 
other  things. 

The  automatisms  thus  acquired  endure  for 
long,  change  little,  and  are  the  habits  that 
characterize  each  individual  —  that  make 
each  differ  a  little  from  every  other  human 
being.  They  are  the  essential  quality 
wherewith  all  expertness  of  every  kind  and 
degree  is  made.  In  the  mechanism  of  these 
automatisms  the  movements  recur  again  and 
again  in  the  same  order;  each  one  is  sug- 
gested to  the  spinal  or  other  nerve  centers 
by  the  one  that  preceded  it,  and  it  in  turn 
suggests  the  one  to  follow,  and  so  on  and 
on  interminably.  A  most  complicated  set 
of  involved  movements,  like  a  piano  tune  or 
a  song,  is  thus  started  by  the  mind,  and  then 
seems  to  go  on  repeating  itself  in  due  order, 
with  the  mind  dreaming  or  thinking  of  other 
things,  and  almost  or  quite  unconscious — 
in  moments  wholly  so — of  what  the  hands  or 
the  voice  are  doing.  When  you  repeat  the 
alphabet  it  is  not  the  starting  of  the  jingle 
that  determines  that  /  shall  follow  k,  but  it 
is  the  uttering  of  k  and  the  letters  imme- 
diately preceding  it  that  forces  /  to  be 
spoken  after  it.  And  it  is  just  as  impossible 
that  any  other  letter  should  take  its  place, 
as  it  is  certain  that  this  one  shall  be  spoken, 

220 


PHYSICAL  BASIS  OF  EXPERTNESS 

The  mechanism  consists  of  a  chain  of  suc- 
cessive suggestions  that  must  occur  in  one 
specific  order  and  cannot  happen  in  any- 
other;  they  are  interdependent,  each  link 
gets  inspiration  from  its  predecessor,  and 
puts  its  successor  in  motion. 

Another  interesting  fact,  too  often  forgot- 
ten, is  that  we  finally  come  in  a  hundred 
ways  to  depend  on  the  automatism,  the 
mind's  creation,  to  put  the  mind  right  and 
to  refresh  the  memory.  Thus  we  invoke 
the  multiplication  table  to  help  out  our 
reasoning  and  save  it  labor.  This  table,  so 
to  say,speaks  itself  and  needs  neither  memory 
nor  reasoning;  and  it  helps.  Often  we  can- 
not tell  the  exact  relation  of  a  particular  let- 
ter of  the  alphabet  to  other  letters,  till  we 
have  started  the  automatism  and  let  it  run 
on,  down  to  the  doutbful  point,  to  enlighten 
us.  So  it  is  with  many  rhymes  that  we 
learn  for  the  purpose  of  relieving  the  mem- 
ory and  mental  attention.  How  many  men 
in  a  hundred  who  speak  our  English  tongue 
can  tell  the  number  of  days  in  each  of  the 
months  picked  out  at  random,  without  re- 
peating the  rhyme  that  begins  with: 
"Thirty  days  hath  September,  April,  June^ 
and  November"? 

Repetition  makes  automatism  in  thought 

221 


PHYSICAL  BASIS  OF  EXPERTNESS 

and  action;  automatisms  are  habits;  and 
these  are  indispensable  necessities  for  the 
relief  of  mental  attention,  and  for  the  con- 
servation of  the  powers  of  the  brain  for  the 
needs  of  our  physical  existence.  They  are 
the  scaffolding  erected  by  the  brain,  and  on 
which  it  builds  and  rises  to  larger  achieve- 
ments. Without  such  aids  the  brain  would 
be  ruined  in  attempting  to  do  the  feats  that 
it  now  accomplishes  easily  and  without 
harm. 

Education  consists  in  a  congeries  of  use- 
ful automatisms  of  brain  and  body.  That 
person  is  best  educated  who  has  the  largest 
number  of  correct  and  efficient  ones,  and 
this,  at  bottom,  is  all  there  is  of  education. 
Pick  it  to  pieces;  analyze  it,  dissect  it,  and 
this  is  practically  what  and  all  you  will  find 
it  to  consist  in.  Automatism  shows  in  men- 
tal acts,  and  even  notions  and  opinions,  as 
truly  as  in  muscular  movements;  appearing 
thus,  it  is  learning  or  education,  pure  and 
simple.  This  may  seem  at  first  to  be  impos- 
sible; opinions  and  thought  appear  so  radi- 
cally different  from  bodily  movements. 
And  they  are  different,  yet  a  little  reflection 
will  show  that  they  all  fall  into  the  same 
category  of  automatic  activities,  and  are  in 
ultimate    analysis   alike    in   making  expert- 

222 


PHYSICAL  BASIS  OF  EXPERTNESS 

ness,  and,  if  well  ordered,  in  being  expert- 
ness.  The  phenomenal  violinist  is  not  a 
whit  more  automatic  than  the  judge  on  the 
bench  who  decides  instanter  a  lot  of 
intricate  and  momentous  questions  appar- 
ently in  the  most  off-hand  manner,  but  cor- 
rectly; or  the  captain  of  the  ship,  who,  from 
the  bridge,  decides  equally  delicate  and  im- 
portant questions  of  navigation  in  the  same 
rapid  manner.  In  each  case  the  mental  at- 
tention and  judgment  help,  but  it  is  the 
automatism  of  the  nerve  centers,  which  has 
been  built  up  by  countless  repetitions  in 
similar  ways,  that  is  the  main  reliance. 
Something  occurs  in  court  that  violates 
judicial  sense  and  usage,  and  the  judge  is 
instantaneously  arrayed  against  it,  and  rules 
accordingly.  He  does  this  without  taking 
the  trouble  to  reason  about  it — the  perform- 
ance is  purely  automatic.  The  ship's  cap- 
tain sees  an  unexpected  danger  ahead,  and  a 
correct  remedy  comes  to  him  as  by  instinct. 
Long  before  he  has  time  to  reason  about  it, 
he  shouts  his  orders  or  makes  his  signals; 
then  he  deliberates  as  to  whether  his  instinc- 
tive act  was  correct,  and  does  it  without 
knowing  that  he  is  doing  it.  The  violinist 
well  illustrates  both  the  mental  and  muscular 
automatisms.     His  bow  and  fingers  in  their 

223 


PHYSICAL  BASIS  OF  EXPERTNESS 

movements,  and  the  cerebral  association  by 
which  one  segment  of  the  series  of  motions 
suggests  another  that  follows,  show  the 
manual  mechanism  in  a  wonderful  way.  But 
in  the  rush  of  action  and  sound  he  presses  his 
finger  on  a  string  a  twentieth  of  an  inch 
from  its  proper  place  for  the  right  tone,  and 
the  slightest  discord  strikes  his  ear.  Does 
he  stop  to  reason  about  the  error?  Rather, 
his  finger  end  finds  its  true  place  instantly 
and  automatically,  and  the  only  other  men- 
tal act  that  occurs  in  connection  with  it 
may  be  a  sense  of  chagrin  afterward  that  it 
has  happened. 

Not  merely  ideas  and  opinions  become 
automatic,  but  moral  principles  and  the 
general  quality  of  conscience  as  well.  And 
if  conscience,  then,  within  limits,  conduct 
also.  Severe  as  it  may  seem,  this  is  a  log- 
ical conclusion  from  the  premises,  and  in- 
volves no  violation  of  good  reasoning;  in 
fact,  there  is  no  stopping-place  short  of  it 
after  we  once  admit  these  elementary  truths 
in  mental  action;  and  the  truths  are  as 
axiomatic  as  any  fact  in  human  physiology. 
But  the  conclusion  is  7iot  severe,  it  only 
seems  so,  and  it  does  not  impeach  either 
conscience  or  conduct.  It  helps  to  explain 
these    in    a    rational    way    for    our    better 

224 


PHYSICAL  BASIS  OF  EXPERTNESS 

philosophy  and  comfort.  Man  makes  use 
of  these  automatisms  through  his  will  or 
volition;  his  efficiency  and  power  among 
men  depend  upon  the  number  and  usefulness 
of  them;  they  are  his  expertness.  He  uses 
his  expertness  to  contribute  to  his  needs  and 
further  his  purposes  of  various  kinds;  if  his 
expertness  is  of  a  high  order,  and  varied,  he 
has,  ipso  facto,  a  great  collection  of  the 
working  tools  of  life.  He  may  neglect  to 
use  them  or  use  them  unwisely,  even  fool- 
ishly, but  he  has  them,  and  he  has  also  the 
responsibility  of  having  them,  which  he 
cannot  shift,  even  if  he  would.  He  must 
answer,  somewhere  and  somehow,  for  this 
responsibility. 

Not  only  do  automatisms  of  the  lower 
spinal  centers  give  the  brain  (or  mind)  free- 
dom from  details  and  thus  increased  power 
for  larger  things  and  thinking;  but  they  are 
a  refuge  for  the  brain  when,  later  in  life,  it 
begins  to  flag  from  certain  blood-vessel 
changes  that  are  incident  to  age.  The 
brain  flags  usually  because  its  cortex  re- 
ceives a  progressively  reduced  amount  of 
blood,  a  commodity  that  is  indispensable  to 
alertness  and  initiative.  It  is  then  that  the 
brain  reaches  a  stage  where  there  is  a  grow- 
ing disposition  to  be  content  with  things  as 

225 


PHYSICAL  BASIS  OF  EXPERTNESS 

they  are;  and  a  few  hints  and  suggestions  to 
the  lower  nerve  centers  set  up  the  necessary 
automatic  actions  and  keep  them  going,  so 
that  there  may  be  the  seeming  of  a  normal 
condition,  of  fresh  energy  and  the  usual 
cerebral  activity.  This  conservative  ar- 
rangement is  the  more  fortunate  since  the 
blood-vessels  of  the  brain  are  more  prone 
than  those  of  the  spinal  cord  to  degenera- 
tions that  lessen  the  supply  of  blood  to  the 
cells  of  the  part.  Perhaps  it  is  a  penalty 
that  we  have  to  pay  for  the  intense  activity 
of  the  brain  in  early  life,  that  it  is  the  organ 
which  first  becomes  obnoxious  to  degener- 
ative changes  that  impair  its  efficiency. 

Let  us  now  go  a  step  farther  and  see,  if 
we  can,  what  happens  in  the  brain  in  the 
growth  of  automatisms;  see  what  occurs 
when  we  learn. 

And  first  we  encounter  what  appears  to 
be  a  law  in  the  action  of  brain  cells  (the 
minute  bodies  that  are  the  functioning  part 
of  the  organ),  which  may  be  stated  sub- 
stantially as  follows:  that,  primarily,  brain 
cells  tend  to  repeat  a  particular  act,  rather 
than  do  another  and  different  one.  A  first 
single  evolution  makes  the  repetition  of  it 
easier  than  a  new  one;  so  each  repetition  of 
a  given  act  fixes  more  firmly  the  tendency  of 

226 


PHYSICAL  BASIS  OF  EXPERTNESS 

the  brain  in  that  direction,  and  renders  it 
less  likely  that  it  will  fail  to  be  repeated 
when  there  is  any  stimulus  toward  an  evolu- 
tion of  that  general  character.  The  ten- 
dency once  firmly  established  and  we  have 
a  habit  in  cerebral  function  that  requires 
force  to  disturb  or  change.  Hence  brain 
habits  are  produced  most  easily  where  none 
have  been  formed  before,  and  this,  of 
course,  means  the  unploughed  field  of  child- 
hood, of  the  brain  of  youth,  a  fact  that  is 
verified  by  all  the  experience  of  the  world. 
But  to  say  there  is  a  law  of  action  of  cells 
is  only  one  step  toward  a  perfect  explana- 
tion. Why  do  the  cells  act  in  this  rather 
than  in  some  other  way?  Their  health  and 
vigor  would  naturally  seem  to  be  best 
conserved  by  a  variation  in  action;  same- 
ness of  action  in  numerous  directions  means 
monotony,  and  why  not  as  a  consequence 
less  vigor?  It  is  logical  to  assume  that 
there  must  be  something  in  the  construc- 
tion and  arrangement  of  brain  cells  to  ac- 
count for  their  laws  of  function — rather,  it  is 
fair  to  suppose  the  brain  cells  would,  in 
their  development,  come  to  be  so  arranged 
and  nourished,  and  acquire  such  powers  as 
would  enable  them  to  perform  their  best 
functions  in  the  economy.     The  anatomists 

227 


,    PHYSICAL  BASIS  OF  EXPERTNESS 

have  in  late  years  conceived  the  relations 
of  brain  cells  in  several  successive  ways. 
One  of  them  helps  us  to  explain  in  a  most 
fascinating  manner  their  peculiar  action. 
The  cells  are,  many  of  them  at  least, 
apparently  separated  by  a  minute  space 
from  their  neighbors  —  perhaps  all  are  so 
arranged.  If  this  is  true  the  cell  im- 
pulses must  extend  in  a  nuncial  manner  by 
indirect  continuity  from  one  to  another; 
must  plough  their  way  perhaps  through  an 
intercellular  substance,  to  make  paths  for 
themselves  in  some  fashion  that  we  can 
probably  never  quite  understand.  If  any- 
thing even  approaching  this  arrangement 
really  exists,  it  is  not  hard  to  see  how  paths 
of  communication  would  be  made  and  so 
habits  of  action  formed.  The  way  once 
blazed  through  a  wilderness  is  easier  to  find 
than  a  new  one,  and  a  well-trodden  path  is 
always  enticing;  a  water  channel  once  made 
in  the  direction  of  least  resistance  entices 
the  water  again  to  flow  there  by  all  the  laws 
that  govern  it.  Or,  if  our  fancy  makes  the 
brain  cells  immovable  and  separated  from 
each  other  like  scattered  soldiers  forbidden 
to  stir,  who  can  only  send  messages  from 
one  part  of  a  field  to  another  by  shouting 
them,  man  to  man,  we  shall  see  how  natu- 

228 


PHYSICAL  BASIS  OF  EXPERTNESS 

rally  the  carried  word  would  seek  a  route 
that  had  been  traversed  before.  Into  a 
chain  of  signal  stations,  accustomed  to 
each  other's  signals,  new  stations  would  not 
easily  be  taken  nor  the  signals  be  sent 
through  a  new  channel,  as  long  as  the  old 
one  serv^ed. 

While  the  histology  of  the  future  may  dis- 
turb the  obvious  physical  basis  for  such  a 
scheme  as  the  one  here  suggested,  some  such 
theory  is  likely  to  stand  for  a  working  basis 
in  our  study  of  mental  automatisms. 

Of  the  automatisms  there  can  be  no  ques- 
tion, nor  of  the  influences  that  produce 
them.  Some  people  automatize  slowly, 
others,  rapidly;  some  require  few,  others 
many,  repetitions  of  thought  and  move- 
ment to  accomplish  a  fixation  of  either;  and 
all  automatize  in  certain  directions  easier 
than  in  others.  Such  differences  are  due  to 
personal  variation  and  do  not  discredit  but 
rather  prove  the  theory  on  which  all  expert- 
ness  must  be  explained. 

Changing  an  automatism  or  displacing  one 
by  another  may  cost  more  in  effort  than  the 
original  one  did.  Habits  are  hard  to  break; 
the  older  and  more  fixed  they  are,  the 
greater  the  difficulty.  And  the  difficulty 
grows,    too,    with    the    radicalness    of    the 

229 


PHYSICAL  BASIS  OF  EXPERTNESS 

change  attempted;  to  introduce  a  wholly 
nov^el  automatism  that  runs  counter  to  those 
already  long  in  existence  is  always  hard; 
but  one  acquisition  may  help  another  when 
along  lines  that  are  not  dissimilar.  Chang- 
ing one  pen-stroke  in  writing  may  be  dis- 
tinctly helped  by  the  habits  already  formed 
as  to  all  the  combinations  of  pen  move- 
ments, when  to  change  the  character  of  all 
of  one's  handwriting  might  be  extremely 
difificult.  By  attempting  only  one  change 
at  a  time  and  a  slight  one,  the  mental  atten- 
tion is  concentrated  upon  that  and  cognate 
habits  may  assist  in  producing  it.  So  cor- 
rect habits  may  help  the  formation  of  other 
and  desirable  ones  that  are  more  or  less  re- 
lated. But,  of  course,  the  most  economical 
method  is  to  start  right,  and  build  up  the 
education  of  the  mind  in  such  a  logical  way 
as  to  involve  the  necessity  of  the  fewest 
changes  possible.  To  have  to  unlearn  is 
always  a  waste  of  energy,  however  it  may 
increase  a  sense  of  moderation  as  well  as  of 
wisdom.  And  educators  have  not  been  the 
least  among  the  sinners  in  their  treatment 
of  the  young,  for  they  have  been  too  prone 
to  violate  all  proportion  and  cause  children 
to  form  useless  habits,  as  well  as  useful  ones 
in  an  illogical  manner. 

230 


PHYSICAL  BASIS  OF  EXPERTNESS 

Yet  it  is  impossible  to  have  the  mental 
automatisms  of  a  child  created  in  such 
sequence  as  to  have  nothing  to  unlearn, 
especially  as  to  minor  elements.  The  child 
misconceives  the  meanings  of  most  words  at 
first,  and  therefore  must  unlearn  a  good 
deal.  Novel  words  have  for  him  too  wide 
or  too  narrow  a  meaning,  and  he  must  cor- 
rect his  first  impressions  and  usages  as  time 
goes  on  and  his  experience  widens.  The 
same  statement  holds  as  to  physical  move- 
ments; many  errors  in  manual  habits  require 
correction  as  expertness  grows.  So  all 
through  life  there  is  changing,  lopping  off 
here  and  making  additions  there,  in  build- 
ing our  automatic  character  of  expertness  of 
mind  and  body  in  every  sort.  It  is  more  or 
less  of  a  constant  metamorphosis,  but  each 
automatism  may  help  or  be  the  basis  of,  or 
the  fulcrum  for,  further  changes  of  a  slight 
degree.  It  is  where  the  demand  is  for 
wholly  new  ones,  such  as  run  squarely 
counter  to  every  phase  of  a  completed  autom- 
atism, that  the  strain  is  severe  and  the  loss 
of  energy  and  time  probably  greatest.  Here 
it  is  not  a  metamorpiiosis  but  a  revolution  in 
habits  that  is  required;  yet,  it  is  accom- 
plished, in  a  way,  if  there  is  enough  patience. 
But  it  is  not  brought  about  by  the  complete 

231 


PHYSICAL  BASIS  OF  EXPERTNESS 

destruction  of  all  the  vestiges  of  the  old 
automatisms;  new  ones  may  be  created  that 
will  control  for  many  years,  but  the  old  ones 
are  only  laid  aside,  the  paths  are  unused, 
grown  up  with  the  weeds  of  neglect  and  per- 
haps not  trodden  for  decades,  but  the  search- 
ing brain  can,  any  day,  easily  find  them  out. 
Take  a  sexagenarian  who  learned  farm 
work  when  he  was  a  boy,  and  who  has  not 
done  a  stroke  of  it  for  forty  years.  Let  him 
some  day  grasp  the  plow  handles  and  throw 
the  reins  over  his  neck,  and  see  what  a  per- 
fect furrow  he  can  turn!  Or,  take  him  to 
the  woods  with  an  axe  and  see  how  adept 
he  is  as  a  wood-chopper,  after  a  genera- 
tion's neglect  of  the  exercise.  The  plow- 
ing and  wood-chopping  were  useful  kinds  of 
skill,  filled  a  creditable  part  of  the  man's 
career  and  were  stepping-stones  to  better 
things  in  a  life  of  honor.  But  there  are 
habits  formed  early  in  life  that  are  neither 
useful  in  themselves  nor  helpful  toward 
better  ones  for  later  usefulness,  and  their 
creation  is  at  best  a  waste  of  energy — always 
to  be  deplored. 

I  have  hinted  at  the  possible  loss  in  vigor 
of  brain  cells  by  reason  of  the  restriction  in 
function  due  to  automatic  action.  The  idea 
gains  some  support  from  the  normal  avidity 

232 


PHYSICAL  BASIS  OF  EXPERTNESS 

for  recreation  shown  by  the  more  wholesome 
people.  And  recreation  and  play  consist  in 
activities  that  are  radically  different  from 
those  most  employed  in  our  daily  work- 
lives.  Denizens  of  the  city  go  to  the  woods, 
play  golf,  fish  and  hunt;  and  get  away  as  far 
as  possible  from  all  the  cares  and  emotions 
of  the  artificial  and  intense  life  of  the  town. 
People  from  the  country,  the  frontier  and 
the  sea,  seek  the  cities  for  novelty  and 
change.  In  each  case  the  change  brings 
rest  to  the  functions  and  forces  that  have 
borne  the  work  and  the  duty;  and  exercises 
those  that  have  been  idle,  and  so  the  gen- 
eral vigor  is  maintained. 

And  the  power  of  the  automatisms  is  not 
lost,  nor  is  their  force  abated,  for  after  the 
recreation  is  over,  the  rested  cells,  inured  to 
the  automatic  action,  take  up  their  work 
with  more  vigor  and  certainty  than  before. 

Tired  out  cells  lose  their  reliability  of 
action  even  in  the  most  automatic  direc- 
tions, and  become  fitful  and  uncertain.  This 
uncertainty  of  action  is  a  sure  sign  of  the 
need  of  rest  and  recreation,  which  are  the 
basis,  next  to  food,  of  the  most  remarkable 
restorations  of  power.  Our  daily  sleep  does 
this  service  for  us  to  a  slight  degree,  but  we 
often  work  beyond  the  power  of  sleep  to 

233 


PHYSICAL  BASIS  OF  EXPERTNESS 

keep  the  cells  up  to  par,  and  must  seek  other 
and  wider  influences  for  restoration. 

Man's  place  in  nature  is  determined 
largely  by  the  character  of  his  expertness, 
and  the  way  it  is  acquired.  If  it  were  all  of 
the  instinctive  variety,  his  capacities  would 
be  few  and  narrow;  he  would  have  little 
power  to  adjust  himself  to  new  conditions 
and  difficulties.  In  the  midst  of  a  struggle 
for  existence  he  would  have  little  advantage 
over  the  rest  of  the  animal  kingdom.  If  a 
hundred  generations  were  required  to  teach 
man  a  new  art,  as  is  necessary  for  the  ani- 
mals, he  would  go  to  the  wall  in  the  general 
contest.  But  in  one  generation  he  may 
learn  a  hundred  new  arts  that  have  never,  in 
all  the  existence  of  his  race,  been  thought  of 
before,  and  so  be  able  to  conquer  the  world. 
The  little  addition  to  its  manual  power, 
which  the  animal  caught  in  a  single  gener- 
ation, was  for  its  obvious  and  immediate 
needs;  while  man  reasons  for  another  place 
and  another  day,  and  does  things  that  have 
no  obvious  meaning  for  his  immediate 
needs,  but  are  potent  for  ulterior  power. 
And  it  is  the  ulterior  power  that  conquers — 
that  guards  against  accidents,  and  provides 
resources. 

But  man  has  instinctive  tendencies,  if  not 

234 


PHYSICAL  BASIS  OF  EXPERTNESS 

instinct,  although  he  seems  not  to  have 
either.  These  tendencies  crop  out  when  it 
is  found  that  a  developing  child  learns  easier 
than  the  average  those  acts  that  his  ancestors 
were  adepts  at.  This  is  something,  if  not 
much,  and  is  the  basis  of  the  peculiar 
powers  of  the  so-called  genius.  The  learn- 
ing is  sometimes  so  easy  that  it  looks  as 
if  the  child  had  the  knowledge  untaught. 
But  this  is  not  true;  all  the  powers  and  ex- 
pertness  of  man  must  be  acquired  from  noth- 
ing, through  his  long  youth  and  pupilage  of 
at  least  a  fifth  of  a  century.  And  the  time 
is  not  wasted.  It  is  filled  with  oppor- 
tunities for  development  and  change,  for 
new  adaptations  to  the  purposes  of  his  exist- 
ence. 

Nor  does  the  character  of  expertness,  and 
the  somewhat  mechanical  explanation  of 
it,  detract  from  the  dignity  of  body  and 
soul.  In  the  first  place,  it  is  not  beneath 
us  to  explain  the  mechanism,  if  we  can,  of 
any  even  abstruse  function  or  power  that 
we  possess.  It  could  not  detract  from  the 
glory  of  the  human  soul  for  us  to  dissect 
it  if  we  could,  and  know  its  uttermost 
quality.  There  will  forever  be  mystery 
enough  in  the  mind  and  body  of  man,  in 
spite  of  all  our  study  and  discoveries. 

235 


PHYSICAL  BASIS  OF  EXPERTNESS 

To  know  the  real  quality  of  man's  expert- 
ness  adds  perceptibly  to  his  dignity  and 
importance.  For  it  shows  that  he  is  very 
distinctly  not  a  creature  of  a  fixed  rule,  ex- 
cept such  a  rule  as  he  in  part  creates;  nor 
an  automaton  fated  to  live  a  fixed  and  pre- 
determined life.  Rather  it  reveals  him  as 
possessing  the  greatest  prerogative  that  can 
belong  to  a  conscious  being — the  ability  to 
measure,  in  some  degree,  the  automatisms 
he  builds  up  for  himself,  and,  within  certain 
limits,  the  power  to  direct  and  control  them, 
and  so,  in  some  measure,  to  be  the  arbiter 
of  his  own  career  —  the  creator  of  his  own 
character. 


236 


The   Discordant   Children 


The   Discordant   Children 


Much  of  the  world's  philosophy  of  human 
life  is  very  old.  It  must  be  true,  or  it  would 
not  have  found  acceptance  so  long.  It  has 
been  uttered  by  meditative  minds  through 
the  centuries,  and  always  along  the  same 
general  lines.  Each  student  has  threshed  it 
over,  and  evolved  an  expression  of  it  a  little 
different  from  that  of  the  rest,  and  perhaps 
somewhat  original,  but  the  essential  prin- 
ciples are  the  same.  Plato  and  Aristotle 
said  it  before  the  days  of  the  Christ;  and 
since  then  Marcus  Aurelius  and  Goethe  and 
Emerson,  and  many  others,  have  told  vari- 
ously a  similar  story — each  probably  telling 
it  better  than  any  other  for  the  particular 
time  and  for  the  people  who  were  listening. 
And  there  have  been  unnumbered  silent 
souls  who  have  thought  it  all  out  for  them- 
selves and  by  themselves  and  alone. 

This  philosophy  has  guided  society  in  its 
evolution  and  development;  it  has  made 
society,  and  has  itself  been  made  by  the 
needs  of  society;  and  its  work  has  been  good. 

239 


THE  DISCORDANT  CHILDREN 

It  has  always  been  rich  in  its  recognition  of 
the  meaning  of  childhood.  Children  are 
the  men  and  women  of  to-morrow,  and  the 
hope  of  all  time.  Their  proper  care  is  the 
most  potent  influence  of  society  upon  itself 
and  the  human  race. 

Pre-eminently,  the  philosophy  common  to 
the  world  applies  to  the  obvious  needs, 
wants  and  defects  of  mankind  for  the  par- 
ticular day  and  generation.  The  hidden, 
the  recondite,  have  been  left  for  the  modern 
student  of  sociology  and  political  economy 
to  find  out,  and  the  discovery  always  comes 
through  laborious  effort.  We  easily  grasp 
the  palpable;  maybe  the  hidden  is  more  vital, 
but  that  we  are  apt  to  slur  over  and  neglect. 

The  axioms  of  the  centuries  have  the  same 
ring  in  any  language:  In  the  long  run  virtue 
and  honesty  pay  best.  The  largest  sum 
total  of  happiness  in  the  life  of  a  soul  is  the 
goal  of  its  duty.  Cultivate  the  industrial 
faculties  of  a  boy,  and  it  will  make  a  hardy 
and  forceful  man  of  him.  Truth  is  mighty, 
and  consists  with  the  universe. — These  and 
similar  doctrines  are  very  old  and  altogether 
true;  and  they  are  as  wholesome  for  all  men 
as  the  morning  sunshine.  They  are  the 
self-evident  heritage  of  all  time,  and  have 
ceased  to  be  remarkable. 

240 


THE  DISCORDANT  CHILDREN 

But  the  old  philosophers  could  not  know 
that  a  micro-organism  breeding  in  the 
human  blood  could  weaken  the  body,  and 
so  decimate  a  race  and  force  it  to  the  back- 
ground in  its  struggle  for  national  life;  or 
that  insanity  is  not  the  possession  of  a  devil, 
but  a  manifestation  of  disease  of  the  brain 
that  is  to  some  degree  preventable  and 
curable;  or  that  a  better  selection  of  food 
and  better  ventilation  and  sewerage  could 
lessen  the  death  rate,  and  make  a  race,  start- 
ing in  poverty  and  nothingness,  to  rise  and 
dominate  the  earth. 

We  understand  and  try  to  provide  for  the 
every-day  manifest  needs  of  the  average 
children,  and  of  men  and  women.  Society 
has  devised  or  evolved  rather  elaborate 
rules  for  many  of  these  requirements.  So 
of  the  very  evident  defects — and  the  rules 
for  both  classes  work  fairly  well.  We  turn 
easily  to  the  study  of  the  insane,  the  crim- 
inal classes,  the  imbeciles,  and  the  otherwise 
defective.  This  later  day  has  witnessed 
great  changes  and  improvement  along  these 
lines,  in  the  humanities,  and  for  the  rescue 
and  protection  of  the  weak. 

In  the  general  education  of  the  masses  the 
gain  has  been  enormous.  Better  methods 
have  obtained,    and  so   better  results,   and 

241 


THE  DISCORDANT  CHILDREN 

more  power  and  effectiveness  in  the  work  of 
life.  Education  has  become  more  easy  and 
interesting,  more  broad  and  practical.  The 
great  body  of  normal  mankind  in  enlight- 
ened countries  is  to-day  probably  better  off 
in  these  particulars,  as  well  as  in  general, 
than  ever  before. 

But  there  is  a  large  class  of  people  in 
moral  and  mental  twilight  who  do  not  belong 
to  the  normal  members  of  the  race,  to  be 
governed  by  the  various  rules  which  we  de- 
vise, and  who  are  not  so  apparently  of  the 
defective  classes  as  to  make  it  easy  for  us  to 
deal  with  them  as  such.  They  are  not  in- 
sane or  imbecile;  nor  are  many  of  them  true 
degenerates;  but  they  are  not  normal  as 
measured  by  the  figures  of  average  people, 
and  the  rules  for  such  cannot  fairly  be  ap- 
plied to  them.  They  are  wayward,  erratic 
and  unmanageable;  they  are  irascible  and 
discordant.  Yet,  because  they  are  not 
clearly  of  the  defective  classes  we  mostly 
insist  on  forcing  them,  theoretically  at  least, 
into  the  category  of  the  strictly  normal  to 
which  all  the  rules  for  the  majority  are  ap- 
plicable. We  are  slow  to  discover  and  seem 
reluctant  to  believe  that  there  is  a  discordant 
class. 

It  is  one  of  our  fads  to  believe  that  people 

242 


THE  DISCORDANT  CHILDREN 

should  be  able  to  fit  into  the  usual  grooves; 
that  they  are  sufficiently  alike  to  be  amen- 
able to  the  same  moral  and  mental  statutes. 
And  we  fly  to  the  conclusion  that  those  who 
do  not  readily  fit  the  rules  we  make  for  the 
race,  can  be  made  to  fit  them.  Like 
Procrustes  of  old,  we  would  cut  off  the 
metaphoric  legs  of  those  who  are  too  long, 
and  stretch  out  those  who  are  too  short  to 
fit  the  special  bed  we  have  devised  for  them 
all  alike.  In  some  sense  and  with  some- 
body we  attempt  this  maneuver  every  day  of 
our  lives. 

We  say  a  child  needs  such  and  such  in- 
fluences; and  should  be  treated  thus  and  so. 
That  is  to  say,  the  average  child;  but  the 
exceptions  are  legion.  The  usual  calcula- 
tion of  what  is  necessary  is  easy,  but  it 
ignores  all  the  cases  that  vary  from  the  com- 
mon type;  and  good  sense,  as  well  as  com- 
mon fairness,  requires  that  we  should  deal 
with  children  on  the  basis  of  what  they  are, 
rather  than  what  we  may  calculate  they 
ought  to  be. 

Most  children  of  moderate  minds  do  fit 
the  ordinances  of  society.  They  can  follow 
the  program  made  for  the  majority  and  can 
do  it  easily,  or  without  much  friction,  and 
not  collapse  in  doing  it.     They  are  adjusted 

243 


THE  DISCORDANT  CHILDREN 

by  nature  to  the  routine  which  society  has 
mapped  out  as  best  for  the  family  of  man  as 
a  whole.  The  routine  is  made  for  the 
majority;  and  so  is  adjusted  to  their  needs. 
And  the  majority  are  like  docile  domestic 
animals;  they  do  not  try  to  get  out  of  the 
traces  or  away  from  the  reins  and  the  hal- 
ters provided  for  them. 

But  some  do  not  and  cannot  fit  the  condi- 
tions fixed  for  the  majority.  They  do  not 
fall  into  the  grooves  of  the  average  child, 
and  they  cannot  be  forced  into  them  suc- 
cessfully. They  are  misfits,  rebellious  and 
out  of  sympathy  with  their  environment. 
They  make  up  the  mass  of  the  truant  chil- 
dren in  the  community,  those  whose  parents 
cannot  keep  them  continuously  located. 
They  often  have  a  deeply  grounded  dislike 
for  their  parents  and  can  barely  tolerate 
them.  They  are  off  to  the  street  and  into 
manifold  kinds  of  mischief.  Most  of  them 
fib;  some  of  them  steal;  they  often  approach 
the  border  line  of  crime;  sometimes  they 
step  over  it  and  are  arrested.  Their  friends 
bail  them  out  and  hush  up  their  peccadillos; 
they  get  into  trouble  again  and  run  afoul  of 
the  law,  and  are  repeatedly  taken  into  cus- 
tody— some  are  sent  to  the  reform  school, 
and  later,  some  to  the  penitentiary.     Many 

244 


THE  DISCORDANT  CHILDREN 

of  the  milder  examples  run  away  from 
home,  travel,  roam  about  for  months  or 
years;  the  worst  ones  do  the  unnatural  crimes, 
even  murder,  that  are  the  wonder  of  society 
and  despair  of  the  economists. 

These  are  the  discordant  children  whose 
music  is  inharmony  and  stridor.  They  rep- 
resent every  shade  and  variation  of  abnor- 
mality within  the  range  of  the  definition, 
from  a  moderate  degree  of  divergence  to  the 
extremes  of  degeneracy.  But  as  a  working 
basis  for  the  study  of  them,  they  may  be 
divided  into  three  classes. 

The  first  class  is  the  smallest  one,  and  the 
worst  in  degree  of  perversion.  It  is  com- 
posed of  those  who  have  congenital  qualities 
that  make  it  impossible  for  them  to  live  and 
work  harmoniously  with  their  wholesome 
fellows,  or  with  the  social  conditions  about 
them.  They  are  in  constant  rebellion 
against  these  conditions  and  against  the 
rules  of  society  which  the  majority  find  no 
objection  to.  Some  of  them  are  degener- 
ates; they  have  irregularly  shaped  heads 
and  bodies,  and  warped  mental  estimates. 
They  are  not  in  harmony  with  anything; 
they  often  run  to  intense  passions  of  many 
kinds,  and  these  often  lead  to  crime.  At 
first  pleased  with  a  set  of  novel  conditions, 

245 


THE  DISCORDANT  CHILDREN 

they  soon  tire  of  them  and  begin  to  rebel;  and 
they  do  this  in  any  wholesome  environment, 
and  they  are  substantially  always  in  trouble. 
A  second  class  is  made  up  of  such  as  ap- 
parently have  the  same  sort  of  warping  of 
nature  as  the  first;  who  rebel  as  vigorously 
at  times,  but  who  in  certain  conditions  and 
surroundings — certain  associations — are  as 
placid  and  harmonious  as  the  most  normal. 
They  are  the  balky  horses  of  human  life; 
they  kick  and  hold  back  and  refuse  to  work 
or  play  at  certain  times  and  under  particular 
circumstances,  and  all  the  whipping  and 
abuse  possible  cannot  change  them.  They 
pull  well  and  are  good  tempered  at  other 
times.  We  are  always  at  a  loss  for  the  ex- 
planation for  all  this — but  the  horses  know  a 
part  of  the  reason,  only  they  cannot  speak 
and  say.  So  the  children  know  in  part,  but 
they  cannot  tell  correctly,  even  if  they 
would.  They  are  often  irritated  by  their 
own  families;  rather,  they  are  abnormally 
irritable  to  their  own,  but  they  get  on  well 
with  strangers.  If  carried  too  far  their 
irascibility  with  their  own  people  becomes 
a  form  of  lunacy.  They  are  often  truants; 
they  hate  school  and  devise  all  sorts  of 
schemes  to  deceive  and  outwit  those  who 
would  help  and  control  them. 

246 


THE  DISCORDANT  CHILDREN 

Such  children  may  easily  be  exasperated  by 
hateful  conditions  into  committing  suicide 
or  other  crimes;  yet  under  favorable  influ- 
ences they  may  become  exemplary  citizens. 
They  do  not  commit  misdemeanors  from  a 
sense  of  duty  as  the  first  class  often  seem  to. 

The  first  class  are  essentially  lawless,  and 
go  wrong  almost  unavoidably  —  they  are 
against  the  status  quo  and  the  government, 
whatever  these  may  be.  The  second  are 
rebellious  only  when  the  misfit  with  the 
environment  exists.  Bring  about  a  right 
adjustment,  and  from  raging  furies  these 
children  become  gentle  and  docile.  And  a 
right  adjustment  may  usually  be  found; 
there  are  conditions  in  which  every  member 
of  this  class  is  fitted  to  live,  and  can  live 
with  pleasure  and  without  rebellion.  Each 
child  yearns  for  and  seeks  those  conditions; 
it  does  not  seek  or  wish  for  a  life  of  discord; 
it  strives  to  find  the  lines  where  it  can  move 
in  peace — and  it  tries  many  experiments 
and  makes  frequent  blunders  in  the  search, 
but  keeps  on  trying. 

These  two  classes  of  children  naturally 
blend  more  or  less  into  each  other.  The 
second  class  is  vastly  the  larger  of  the  two; 
the  marked  degenerates  and  those  who  are 
always  in  rebellion  are  a  small  minority  of 

247 


THE  DISCORDANT  CHILDREN 

the  whole.  But  the  two  classes  have  one 
characteristic  in  common:  their  discordant 
traits  are,  within  limits,  constant  through 
life;  these  may  be  changed  somewhat  by- 
care  and  training  (and  those  of  the  second 
class  change  most),  but  they  are  never 
wholly  eradicated. 

There  is  a  third  and  a  very  large  class  of 
discordant  children,  composed  of  those  who 
manifest  the  defects  and  perversity  only 
through  a  certain  period,  and  often  a  rather 
early  period,  of  their  lives.  They  grow  or 
evolve  out  of  their  friction  and  lawlessness 
by  the  march  of  time.  Each  half  decade 
witnesses  some  change  in  their  behavior 
toward  those  who  are  associated  with  them, 
especially  in  the  direction  of  adjustment. 
Sometimes  a  radical  change  occurs  sud- 
denly—and becomes  permanent.  Their 
rebellion  is  usually  greatest  in  the  earlier 
years,  say  up  to  the  age  of  fifteen,  after 
which  there  is  a  decided  change  for  the 
better.  One  marked  characteristic  of  many 
of  these — of  all  the  classes  for  that  matter — 
is  their  disregard  for  the  rights,  conveniences 
and  feelings  of  others.  This  is  a  defect 
that  is  founded  in  selfishness,  as  are  most  of 
the  discords  of  all  the  children  under  discus- 
sion;  as    well    as    those   of   most   men   and 

248 


THE  DISCORDANT  CHILDREN 

women.  And  selfishness  does  not  end  with 
the  fifteenth  year,  nor  usually  through  life, 
but  it  changes  then,  and  thereafter  conspires 
more  toward  gaining  the  good  opinions  of 
others;  and  this  gives  an  altruistic  shade  to 
it  that  is  refreshing.  The  rowdy  of  a  boy, 
careless  of  himself  and  blind  to  the  feelings 
of  others,  suddenly  becomes  a  gentleman, 
and  he  does  not  know  why  or  how.  He 
does  many  of  the  things  that  gentlemen  do, 
and  drops  his  loud,  loutish  unkemptness 
and  becomes  fit  for  the  fondness  of  others, 
which  he  grows  to  covet.  To  specify  one 
of  the  psychologic  differences  we  might  say 
that  he  has  become  less  brutally  selfish,  and 
taken  on  more  refinement  of  conceit — which 
is  only  another  form  of  selfishness.  But 
then  he  is  more  amenable  to  the  behests  of 
society  and  more  endurable  to  others;  he  is 
less  a  barbarian.  He  has  suddenly  ceased 
to  be  a  problem  for  the  publicists;  he  is  an 
attractive  member  of  society  and  may  re- 
main so  through  life.  From  being  himself 
one  of  the  unfortunates  and  a  subject  for  the 
solicitude  of  others,  he  suddenly  becomes 
one  of  those  who  study  the  unfortunates  and 
help  them. 

The  different  classes  of  erratic   children 
need  different  modes  of  treatment.      They 

249 


THE  DISCORDANT  CHILDREN 

cannot  all  be  helped  much,  some  can  hardly 
be  helped  at  all;  but  most  of  them  can  be 
improved  somewhat  if  they  are  dealt  with  in 
the  right  way. 

Class  number  one  offers  the  most  serious 
and  the  most  nearly  hopeless  problem. 
Their  fixedness  of  morbid  impulses,  their 
discords  with  everything  about  them,  and 
their  proof  against  good  influences  that 
strongly  move  other  children,  mostly  take 
them  out  of  the  reach  of  our  efforts.  But 
the  fact  that  many  of  them  may  be  changed 
a  little,  and  a  few  greatly,  should  constrain 
us  to  persist  with  limitless  patience,  in  a 
search  for  the  influence  that  may  help  them. 

Classes  two  and  three  can  be  helped  very 
much  and  easily  if  the  right  course  is  pur- 
sued. There  is  no  justification  for  the  loss 
of  any  of  them;  yet  our  bungling  and  hesi- 
tation— due  in  part  to  the  annoyance  that 
most  such  children  give  their  parents  and 
friends,  and  the  failure  to  understand  them, 
make  most  of  our  efforts  in  their  behalf 
rather  nugatory.  There  is  generally  de- 
voted to  them  a  large  amount  of  energy  that 
by  its  misdirection  is  almost  thrown  away; 
the  children  grow  up,  worry  along,  experi- 
ment with  themselves  in  a  fatuous  way  and 
run  amuck  of  the  world;    and   end  finally  in 

250 


THE  DISCORDANT  CHILDREN 

success  or  failure,  as  they  may.  They  nearly 
all  (especially  the  third  group)  come  out 
right  if  let  alone,  and  if  allowed  to  evolve 
with  the  smallest  amount  of  interference. 
Too  much  training  does  them  harm,  and 
they  usually  receive  too  much. 

What  to  do  with  the  discordant  children 
is  the  paramount  question.  That  they  can- 
not be  dealt  with  like  the  average  child  is  no 
reason  for  ignoring  them,  or  throwing  their 
claims  aside  as  of  no  consequence.  In  deal- 
ing with  them  we  should,  as  far  as  we  are  con- 
cerned, divest  the  problem  of  all  fiction  and 
foolish  notions,  and  consider  it  as  we  would 
any  other  problem,  deliberatively,  and  as  far 
from  morbid  emotion  as  possible.  Least  of 
all  should  we  regard  the  discordant  child  as 
a  disgrace  to  the  family,  to  be  spoken  of 
under  the  breath  and  to  be  shamed  for  his 
perversity.  His  traits  are  innately  no  more 
disgraceful  than  it  is  to  dislike  a  certain 
diet;  and  the  fact  that  a  child  does  not  like 
oat-meal  and  cheese  is  no  reason  why  he 
should  not  be  nourished  by  other  foods — • 
these  are  not  the  only  pabulum  for  the 
human  body,  and  it  is  even  conceivable  that 
the  child  is  right  and  that  oat-meal  and 
cheese  are  not  the  best  for  him  or  for  any  of 
us.     The  disgrace  obtains  only  in  a  failure 

251 


THE   DISCORDANT  CHILDREN 

to  seek  the  right  food  for  body  and  soul. 
Neither  should  such  a  child  be  regarded  as 
an  invalid,  to  be  coddled  and  indulged  like 
a  baby.  These  children  have  some  of  the 
best  energy  of  the  world,  which  may  be 
extremely  useful  or  very  much  of  a  nui- 
sance to  society,  and  they  should  early  feel, 
if  they  can  feel,  that  they  have  large  re- 
sponsibilities in  their  own  conduct. 

How  to  select  the  right  course  of  manage- 
ment for  each  of  them,  varying  as  they  do  so 
widely  and  so  radically,  is  the  most  perplex- 
ing of  problems.  We  can  never  hope,  with 
the  fallibility  of  our  minds,  to  solve  it  per- 
fectly for  all  the  cases;  but  if  we  can  see  the 
condition  of  a  part  of  them  ameliorated — 
even  a  small  part — we  ought  to  have  abun- 
dant satisfaction.  In  our  blundering  efforts 
and  halting  purposes  we  shall  often  apply 
the  wrong  treatment  and  misuse  the  best 
possible  measures,  and  so  cause  them  to 
work  wrong.  But  we  can  at  least  try,  and 
there  are  a  few  cardinal  facts  and  principles 
that,  if  we  study  and  follow  them,  ought  to 
minify  our  errors  and  make  our  success  at 
least  apparent. 

The  first  great  step  to  consider  in  the  right 
management  of  these  children  is  in  the 
physical    direction,    or   rather   the   medical 

252 


THE  DISCORDANT  CHILDREN 

direction;  as  the  foremost  fact  about  many 
of  them  is  that  their  misfortunes  are  due  to 
the  reflex  effect  on  the  nervous  system  of 
some  local  physical  irritation,  or  of  some 
wrong  stimulation.  The  irritations  are 
alarmingly  common,  mostly  curable,  and 
alone  produce  many  of  the  cases;  that  is, 
without  them  many  of  the  worst  ones  would 
be  perfectly  normal  children.  The  irrita- 
tions often  start  in  early  childhood  and  con- 
tinue for  many  years,  producing  an  incessant, 
slow,  sometimes  exasperating  sort  of  grind- 
ing upon  the  nervous  tolerance,  that  makes 
the  victim  as  far  from  what  he  otherwise 
would  be,  as  a  maniac  is  from  tranquil 
sanity.  And  the  saddest  fact  about  it  is 
that  after  the  irritation  has  existed  for 
several  years  the  nervous  equation  and  tem- 
per of  the  child  are  changed  for  life;  new 
and  bad  nervous  habits  and  vicious  emotions 
have  been  formed  that  will  not  stop  even 
after  the  original  cause  is  gone.  Hence  the 
rule  should  be  invariable  to  remove  the  irri- 
tations early,  wherever  and  whatever  they 
may  be.  They  mostly  are  discoverable,  yet, 
as  to  some  of  them,  parents  are  apt  to  ignore 
their  existence,  or  even  refuse  to  believe  in 
their  possibility. 

The  physical  irritations  are  of  course  not 

253 


THE  DISCORDANT  CHILDREN 

all  of  the  same  measure  of  harmfulness. 
Those  that  do  not  worry  the  nervous  system 
do  little  harm,  but  those  that  worry  it  do 
injury  always.  The  problem  of  the  dis- 
cordant children  is  the  problem  of  the  erratic 
brain  and  nervous  system;  and  undue  ex- 
citement of  this  system  in  childhood  and 
youth  can  never  fail  to  do  it  the  most  posi- 
tive harm.  The  damage,  produced  through 
the  months  (other  things  being  equal)  is 
probably  always  in  the  ratio  of  the  irrita- 
bility of  the  nerves  of  the  part  that  is  in- 
volved— and  in  children  these  nerves  are 
often  the  nameless  ones  that  are  the  very 
quick  of  life. 

For  parents  and  caretakers  of  children  to 
say  they  are  ignorant  that  such  irritations 
often  exist,  is  to  confess  that  they  do  not 
observe  the  children  growing  up  under  their 
very  eyes,  or  that  they  are  not  on  confiden- 
tial terms  with  them,  or  have  not  the  cour- 
age to  be  frank  with  them  as  to  the  things 
that  most  concern  their  feelings  and  affect 
their  lives.  These  confessions  are  lamen- 
table, and  have  to  be  made  for  and  by  the 
majority  of  parents;  but  none  of  them  nor 
all  of  them  can  excuse  one  for  so  great  an 
unfairness  to  a  child.  And  of  all  the  sins 
in  the  category  of  unmeant  wickedness  few 

254 


THE  DISCORDANT  CHILDREN 

can  surpass  that  of  a  parent  who  bars  his 
child  from  coming  to  him  with  open  frank- 
ness as  to  the  closest  friend,  about  those 
unfortunate  if  not  reprehensible  things  that 
are  uppermost  in  his  mind,  because  they 
are  uppermost  to  his  nerves.  The  thing 
most  evident  to  the  nerves  is  sure  to  be 
uppermost  in  the  mind;  indeed,  often,  close 
mental  attention  to  much  beside  some  en- 
grossing nervous  sensation  is  quite  impos- 
sible. You  charge  a  child  again  and  again 
to  remember  his  errands  and  the  details  of 
what  you  tell  him.  But  your  words  come 
in  at  one  ear  and  go  out  at  the  other;  he  is 
absorbed  with  his  sensations  and  his  dis- 
torted notions  of  their  meaning,  and  he  will 
not  heed  and  cannot  remember. 

That  the  proprieties  of  life  should  become 
its  pruderies,  and  lead  us  often  to  sins  of 
omission  to  the  children,  is  the  saddest 
miscarriage  of  good  purposes.  When  the 
child  comcj  to  you,  or  tries  to,  with  a  sliver 
in  his  finger  and  you  say,  "Hush,  hush,  that 
is  not  to  be  talked  of;  just  look  at  the  stars, 
behold  the  trees  and  the  flowers,"  you  give 
him  precisely  the  comfort  of  a  blow  in  the 
face.  The  waves  of  the  sea  will  not  be  still 
at  your  bidding.  And  if  you  try  to  hide 
from    your   child,    and    yourself    ignore,    a 

255 


THE  DISCORDANT  CHILDREN 

quarter  of  his  nature,  and  then  permit  his 
nerves  to  remind  him  of  that  quarter  per- 
petually, you  ought  to  expect  to  fail,  as  you 
will  fail.  It  is  left  for  the  older  people, 
who  are  farther  removed  from  the  spon- 
taneity of  nature,  to  say  and  believe,  out  of 
a  rhapsody  of  putative  religious  fervor,  that 
there  is  no  sliver  and  no  pain.  The  child 
knows  better,  he  sees  through  the  decep- 
tion and  will  have  none  of  it.  On  one  basis 
only  will  he  ignore  the  pain,  namely,  that 
it  is  admitted  to  exist  and  to  be  unpleasant, 
and  that  it  may  and  must  be  borne,  with 
what  stoicism  he  can  command. 

After  the  physical  irritations,  next  in 
degree  of  power  to  lower  the  tone  of  the 
brain  and  nerves,  stand  the  various  stimula- 
tions, whether  by  alcoholic  or  other  poisons 
of  the  brain  like  tea,  coffee  and  tobacco,  or 
unwholesome  emotions;  and  lack  of  tran- 
quil rest  and  sleep.  Children  should  live 
by  food  only  and  without  stimulants  or  emo- 
tions beyond  their  years  and  be  well  nour- 
ished constantly.  Modern  society  is  much 
disposed  to  forget  these  truths,  and  slow  to 
learn  that  in  violating  them  a  child  may 
mortgage  its  future  more  effectually  than  a 
man  can  by  any  means  in  his  power. 

On  the  moral  side  it  is  quite  as  important 

256 


THE  DISCORDANT  CHILDREN 

to  be  candid  and  frank  with  the  discordant 
children — as,  for  that  matter,  with  all  chil- 
dren. The  self-respect  of  the  individual 
ought,  if  possible,  to  be  conserved.  No 
ordinary  man  can  do  the  best  that  is  in  him, 
or  anything  approaching  it,  if  he  has  the 
sense  of  humiliation  and  of  being  belittled 
and  degraded.  The  larger  and  the  more 
self-poised  the  man  the  more  he  is  insensible 
to  these  emotions,  and  a  few  stoical  philos- 
ophers are  able  to  ignore  them  entirely  when 
deeply  engrossed  with  some  purpose.  But 
children  cannot  do  this,  nor  should  we 
expect  them  to — their  egoism  and  self-con- 
sciousness are  far  too  great  for  that. 

A  child's  sense  of  fairness  is  acute;  and  it 
is  too  potent  and  valuable  a  quality  to  be 
lost.  Children,  like  men,  do  best  when 
dealt  with  fairly,  candidly,  and  without 
mystery  or  subterfuge.  A  great  influence 
over  a  boy  is  often  lost  by  his  discovering 
that  what  he  calls  a  trick  has  been  practised 
upon  him.  Boys  hate  tricks  when  they  are 
the  victims,  and  their  monitors  are  the 
authors  of  them.  A  trick  may  be  taken 
in  good  part  from  a  fellow,  but  never  from 
a  teacher  or  parent. 

A  great  gain  is  made  if  you  can  evoke  in 
the  mind  of  a  discordant  child  an  interest  in 

257 


THE  DISCORDANT  CHILDREN 

something  besides  mischief,  and  resistance, 
apparently  for  the  fun  of  it,  to  the  wishes 
and  purposes  of  others.  And  a  little  en- 
couragement, and  direction  of  some  natural 
bent  of  the  child  is  often  all  that  is  needful. 
His  wholesome  natural  impulses,  if  he  has 
any,  may  often  be  used  to  re-create  him. 

A  sense  of  responsibility  has  great  moder- 
ating value  and  it  ought  to  be  encouraged 
even  to  the  extent  of  many  fads  and  whims. 
To  take  up  or  have  some  useful  aim  (or 
even  a  useless  one  if  pursued  with  conti- 
nuity) is  to  remove  much  of  the  boy's  misfit 
with  his  surroundings.  The  instant  he  is 
permitted  or  encouraged  to  do  something  or 
have  something,  and  imagine  himself  of 
some  of  the  consequence  of  manhood,  the 
leaven  has  begun  to  work. 

Parents  often  frown  on  some  boy  ambition 
in  play-work  because  it  has  no  obvious  con- 
nection with  the  business  of  life,  when  it 
has  the  greatest  possible  value  in  the  ex- 
panding of  the  boy  himself.  This  latter  is, 
during  boyhood,  the  paramount  business  of 
life.  Parents  unable  to  see  this,  make  the 
boys  unhappy  in  their  collecting  of  stamps 
or  some  less  useful  things,  the  training  of 
their  dogs  and  the  building  of  their  boats 
and    machines,    when    these   are    the    very 

258 


THE  DISCORDANT  CHILDREN 

exercises  that  foreshadow  and  prepare  for 
the  duties  of  mature  years — these  apparently 
useless  pursuits  are  the  tentative  homo- 
logues  of  the  larger  things  of  the  man's 
career. 

When  the  boy  comes  to  take  up  the  work 
of  life,  or  try  to  prepare  for  it,  he  has  a 
right  to  be  consulted  about  the  course  to 
pursue,  and  ought  not,  against  strong  dis- 
likes, to  be  forced  into  an  occupation  that 
his  elders  believe  him  fitted  for.  History  is 
replete  with  failures  that  have  resulted  from 
this  bad  policy — the  policy  has  not  suc- 
ceeded, but  has  increased  the  discord  and 
rebellion,  and  some  of  the  failures  are  world- 
famous. 

It  is  absurd  to  force  a  boy  to  continue 
long  in  a  line  of  literary  study  when  he 
wishes  to  be  a  machinist.  If  he  will  take 
up  outdoor  or  shop  work,  and  rebels  against 
the  classics,  he  has  a  right  to  his  way  about 
it,  and  society  has  the  right  to  have  him 
have  it.  The  chances  are  that  he  will 
eagerly  take  up  any  practical  study  in 
mechanical  or  manual  lines  that  may  be 
offered  him.  But  he  should  not  be  forced 
to  do  even  this;  nor  should  any  child  be 
given  an  elaborate  education  at  the  point  of 
the  bayonet.     I  know  that  substantially  the 

259 


THE  DISCORDANT  CHILDREN 

contrary  is  the  contention  of  the  hour,  but  it 
is  a  species  of  nonsense  that  has  done  a  vast 
amount  of  mischief.  The  right  rule  is  to 
give  any  child  an  education  who  desires  it 
and  will  work  for  it,  and  who  will  make  it 
tell  for  greater  usefulness  and  happiness. 
But  if  there  is  substantial  reason  to  force 
study  and  education  on  any  one,  it  holds 
for  the  discordant  child;  for  intellectual 
pursuits  more  than  anything  else  may  re- 
move the  discord.  Only  the  scheme  will 
probably  fail  if  he  discovers  that  he  is  being 
forced.  All  thought  of  compulsion  disap- 
pears however  when  the  child  shows,  as  he 
usually  does,  strong  avidity  for  such  studies 
as  object-lesson  work  and  manual  training; 
and  botany,  geology,  and  other  sciences 
when  taken  up  practically  and  pursued  in 
the  woods,  the  mountains  or  by  the  sea.  No 
caterpillar  ever  changed  more  in  becoming 
a  butterfly  than  many  boys  who  have  hated 
the  restraint  of  the  schoolroom  and  pure 
book  study,  change  when  they  are  liberated 
to  this  practical  sort  of  schooling.  It  is  like 
going  from  dungeon  bars  to  light  and  free- 
dom. 

It  is  wrong  to  ridicule  a  young  person 
because  he  tries  several  occupations  before 
finding  the  right  one  or  the  one  he  is  satis- 

260 


THE  DISCORDANT  CHILDREN 

fied  with.  It  is  his  misfortune  that  he  vac- 
illates, rarely  his  fault,  and  it  may  require 
numerous  trials  and  tests  before  he  is  settled 
into  the  right  groove.  Some  are  unable  to 
stay  long  in  any  one  groove;  they  are  always 
looking  for  the  right  one  for  a  permanency, 
and  never  quite  find  it.  Their  fault  is  a 
nervous  one,  sometimes  a  nervous  disease 
that  they  cannot  avoid.  They  are  nervous 
and  vacillating  through  life  and  cannot 
help  it.  It  seems  to  require  such  to  make  a 
world — all  cannot  have  the  ideal  stability 
and  sustained  power.  The  newly  discovered 
disorder  of  hyperthyroidation  explains 
some,  perhaps  most,  of  these  cases.  If 
most  of  them,  then  a  sovereign  remedy  for  it 
would  be  the  greatest  possible  benefaction 
to  the  world,  for  it  would  radically  change 
the  character  of  society. 

If  a  child  is  discontented  and  rebellious  it 
is  better  to  let  him  try  different  pursuits, 
diversions  and  studies,  in  the  hope  of  his 
finding  the  one  that  can  engage  and  tran- 
quilize  his  mind.  But  he  should  be  made  to 
feel  his  own  large  responsibility  in  the  mat- 
ter, and  be  spared  the  vicious  influence  of 
thinking  that  everything  must  be  done  for 
him,  and  that  he  need  do  nothing  for  him- 
self.    To  set  a  boy  up  at  great  expense  in 

261 


THE  DISCORDANT  CHILDREN 

several  successive  kinds  of  business  to  be 
failed  in,  as  rich  parents  are  wont  to  do, 
often  adds  to  his  demoralization.  Such 
cases  illustrate  in  a  negative  way  some  of 
the  advantages  in  being  poor. 

It  is  a  great  step  forward  when  one  of 
these  children  comes  to  desire  to  win  and 
have  the  respect  of  worthy  people.  And 
the  entering  wedge  is  often  the  act  of  mak- 
ing him  feel  that  such  people  have  an  inter- 
est in  him.  If  he  is  once  touched  in  this 
way  he  is  saved  indeed. 

But  the  encouragement  to  this  end  is  pre- 
cisely the  thing  we  are  likely  not  to  offer. 
It  is  easier  to  pursue  the  method  of  vindic- 
tive punishment,  to  lash  and  scold  and  snarl 
at  the  wayward  children,  a  method  that  too 
often  leads  to  a  course  of  sustained  resist- 
ance that  has  a  touch  of  the  heroic.  We 
may  not  justify  the  resistance,  but  we  can 
hardly  wonder  at  it,  and  are  often  reluc- 
tantly compelled  to  admire  it. 

The  late  Superintendent  Rowland,  of  Chi- 
cago, was  one  day  sitting  in  the  office  of  a 
school  principal  when  an  intelligent  but 
dogged  looking  boy  entered  the  room  with 
a  note  from  his  teacher,  telling  of  some 
fresh  disobedience,  and  saying  that  her 
resources     in     controlling    him     were    ex- 

262 


THE  DISCORDANT  CHILDREN 

hausted.  The  principal  turned  to  Rowland 
in  despair  and  recited  (in  the  presence  of 
the  boy)  a  long  catalogue  of  punishments 
that  had  been  inflicted  on  him  to  compel 
obedience  and  good  conduct.  He  had  been 
suspended  repeatedly,  and  expelled  once  or 
twice  and  taken  back  again;  his  parents  had 
whipped  him  often,  and  the  principal  had 
flogged  him  at  their  request;  and  he  had 
received  sundry  other  refinements  of  humili- 
ation and  torture,  including  starvation,  cold, 
and  a  general  withholding  of  the  pleasures 
of  boy  life.  But,  like  an  embodiment  of 
total  depravity,  he  had  grown  worse  rather 
than  better.  Would  Mr.  Howland  suggest 
an  expedient?  Yes,  he  would,  and  it  was  to 
leave  the  boy  with  him  for  half  an  hour. 

Once  alone  with  him  Howland  began 
to  ask  questions  about  the  boy's  life,  his 
parents,  brothers,  sisters  and  friends;  his 
birthplace  and  residence;  his  nationality 
and  traditions;  and  about  his  games  and 
amusements.  Then  he  told  of  the  sports  of 
his  own  childhood,  and  discussed  with  the 
boy  the  relative  merits  of  the  games  at  the 
two  periods;  and  finally  about  his  own 
studies,  then  the  boy's  studies,  and  the 
experiences  in  learning,  and  the  relative 
merits   of    the    different    studies    and    their 

263 


THE  DISCORDANT  CHILDREN 

value  in  after  life.  And  the  boy  freely  ex- 
pressed his  opinions.  When  the  principal 
returned  Rowland  said  to  the  boy:  "You 
may  go  back  to  your  room  now.  I  shall  be 
glad  to  discuss  these  matters  further  with 
you  sometime." 

In  three  months  Rowland  came  again, 
when  the  principal  eagerly  asked  him  what 
he  had  done  to  the  incorrigible  boy  when 
left  alone  with  him  at  his  previous  visit. 
Re  replied,  "I  did  nothing.  Why  do  you 
ask?"  "I  ask  because  he  has,  from  that 
hour,  been  a  changed  being;  he  is  the  best 
boy  in  the  whole  school."  And  so  he  was. 
Re  was  a  new  soul  born  into  the  civilized 
world,  and  all  because,  perhaps,  for  the  first 
time  in  his  life,  a  man  of  his  largest  estima- 
tion had  actually  talked  with  him  for  thirty 
minutes,  and  had  conferred  with  him  as 
though  he  had  a  mind  and  a  soul,  and  was 
worthy  of  consideration.  The  confidence 
of  a  larger  nature  had  touched  him;  he  had 
felt  the  tingle  of  it  as  a  new  responsibility, 
and  had  risen  to  its  level.  Morally  he  had 
grown  a  foot  taller  in  that  brief  time.  The 
new  birth  to  a  better  purpose,  that  befell 
this  boy,  is  what  occurs  in  hundreds  of  the 
undegenerate  discordant  children;  occurs  by 
a  single  act  or  event,  some  unexpected,  per- 

264 


THE  DISCORDANT  CHILDREN 

haps  momentary  influence  that  happens  for 
the  time  to  put  a  better  impulse  of  the  child 
in  control  of  him  where  a  worse  one  had 
governed,  and  the  better  element  may  then 
guide  him  through  life.  This  is  the  great 
transformation  to  strive  for  with  all  these 
unfortunate  children.  That  such  a  sudden 
alteration  is  possible,  such  a  complete 
change  in  the  moral  nature,  and  that  the 
new  phase  will  often  continue  for  life,  is 
one  of  the  most  amazing  as  well  as  encourag- 
ing facts  in  human  life  and  nature. 

The  correction  and  punishment  of  chil- 
dren is  always  a  bitter  problem.  There  are 
numerous  kinds  of  punishment  and  several 
effects  on  the  child  that  are  undesirable — a 
few  that  are  desirable.  He  is  either  re- 
pentant and  resolves  to  be  good;  or  he  finds 
the  smart  makes  the  fun  of  the  mischief  un- 
profitable; or  he  finds  that  the  occupation 
growing  out  of  the  discipline  takes  the  place 
of  the  roguery,  and  so  he  forgets  the  latter; 
or  he  is  ugly  and  mad  to  the  core,  and  stays 
so. 

The  thing  most  to  be  wished  is,  of  course, 
that  he  who  is  chastised  shall  be  chastened, 
be  better  and  not  worse  for  it,  nor  more  em- 
bittered in  spirit.  This  is  not  likely  to  re- 
sult if  the  sentence  is  vindictive,  or  given  in 

265 


THE  DISCORDANT  CHILDREN 

anger,  or  to  conserve  the  injured  dignity  of 
the  older  person,  or  on  a  strictly  punitive 
basis,  i.  e.,  so  much  offense,  so  much  pun- 
ishment. Given  in  either  of  these  ways 
punishment  is  likely  to  harm  the  child,  and 
sure  to  harm  the  giver  of  it. 

The  only  safe  and  altogether  wholesome 
sort  of  punishment  is  that  which,  in  a  way, 
suggests  and  controls  itself;  what  some  like 
to  call  retributive  punishment,  because  it 
seems  to  grow  naturally  out  of  the  offense, 
as  when  a  boy  is  made  to  pick  up  the 
potatoes  he  has  spilled;  to  work  and  pay 
for  the  dishes  he  has  broken.  This  kind  of 
treatment  is  free  from  the  vice  of  minister- 
ing to  the  egoism  of  the  monitors  as  shown 
in  their  anger,  or  conceit;  the  children 
themselves,  the  best  natural  judges  of 
ethics,  know  this  and  are  better  for  it. 
Such  punishment,  if  strictly  speaking  it  is 
punishment,  which  I  doubt,  is  one  of  the 
most  helpful  exercises  for  any  child,  and  I 
can  see  no  reason  why  all  children  should 
not  in  this  manner  be  led  daily  to  feel  re- 
sponsibility for  their  acts. 

Finally,  the  discipline  of  the  law  is  useful, 
the  hand  of  authority^for  the  neglect  of 
duty  and  the  heedlessness  that  carries  harm 
to  others,  and   for  the  misdemeanor.     The 

266 


THE  DISCORDANT  CHILDREN 

good  effect  of  the  truant  laws  in  force  in 
certain  American  cities  is  perfectly  appar- 
ent. So  far  as  can  be  learned  they  have 
all  been  economical  and  beneficial  to 
society;  they  have  lessened  crime  and  been 
good  for  all  concerned.  So  too  of  the 
curfew  laws.  They  have  greatly  lessened 
the  small  misdemeanors  and  perceptibly 
decreased  the  larger  ones.  They  are  a  pay- 
ing investment  to  the  community,  and  a 
benefit  to  all  the  children  they  touch. 

Now,  schools  have  been  organized  for 
truant  children  where  the  recalcitrants  are 
housed,  fed,  taught  and  made  to  work  about 
the  affairs  of  their  daily  wants  and  needs. 
And  the  good  effect  for  nearly  all  of  them  is 
prompt  and  enduring.  After  a  variable 
period  they  are  all  (except  the  true  degener- 
ates) sent  back  to  their  homes  and  common 
schools,  and  make  tradable  and  obedient 
pupils.  It  is  contact  with  the  realities  of 
existence  in  a  new  way  that  works  the  meta- 
morphosis; the  object-lessons  of  study  and 
work  for  the  needs  of  life,  which  create  a 
new  interest  and  mental  attention  never 
before  thought  of;  and  greatest  of  all,  repeat- 
ed gentle  encounters  with  the  inexorable- 
ness  of  law.  For  the  conditions  of  the  cases 
in  hand  nothing  ever  has,  or  probably  ever 

267 


THE  DISCORDANT  CHILDREN 

will,  take  the  place  of  this  last  force.  That 
it  should  be  despised  by  philosophers  is 
proof  of  one  of  the  far-swings  of  the  pendu- 
lum of  thought. 

One  of  the  greatest  gains  is  that  the  chil- 
dren are  taught  the  force  and  meaning  of 
law,  and  that  laws  must  sometimes  be 
obeyed.  That  the  true  basis  of  the  law  is 
the  good  of  society  will  come  to  them 
later.  Then  the  law,-  executing  itself  by  its 
impersonal  fiat,  is  free  from  the  quality  of 
spite;  and  boys  hate  to  be  punished  from 
spite.  Even  if  the  sheriff— for  the  time  the 
personal  hand  of  the  law  —  is  accused  of 
unnecessary  severity,  the  boys  are  usually 
ready  to  absolve  the  entity  called  the  state 
from  any  part  in  it.  To  them  the  state 
stands,  to  some  degree  at  least,  in  the  atti- 
tude of  a  force  that  is  inevitable  and  without 
malice. 

The  dish-water  philosophy  of  non-resist- 
ance, the  abrogation  of  force,  and  final  com- 
plete resort  to  moral  suasion,  weaken  some 
phases  of  human  character  that  are  indis- 
pensable to  effective  and  determining  force 
in  the  world,  for  they  belie  such  great  facts 
of  the  universe  as  the  unavoidable  struggle 
for  existence,  the  greed  and  pressure  of  in- 
born selfishness,   and  the  hard  knocks  most 

268 


THE  DISCORDANT  CHILDREN 

children  must  sooner  or  later  take,  and  per- 
chance give. 

Some  current  teaching  seems  ambitious  to 
make  us  believe  that  there  is  no  turmoil  in 
life,  no  struggle,  temptation  or  tragedy. 
Many  people  do  go  through  life  and  die  with 
none  of  the  struggles,  but  they  are  few  com- 
pared to  the  whole  population.  All  chil- 
dren are  liable  some  day  to  meet  the 
hardships  and  the  storms,  and  when  those 
not  steeled  aright  do  have  to  face  them, 
they  are  thrown  into  consternation,  and  may 
become  embittered  toward  the  world;  and 
they  frequently  blame  their  elders  and 
teachers  who  might  have  shown  them  the 
realities  and  dangers  of  life.  It  is  better  to 
be  told  the  truth  and  to  face  the  inevitable 
than  to  be  lulled  into  false  hopes,  and  live 
in  an  atmosphere  of  the  unreal,  to  be  finally 
disillusioned  with  a  shock. 

It  is  beautiful  to  be  able  to  rise  into  the 
clouds  of  imagination,  and  float  there  in  a 
reverie  of  diversion;  and  to  believe  that  all 
of  life  is  prearranged  and  ideal.  But,  for 
the  fateful,  wholesome  struggles  of  exist- 
ence, it  profits  us  mightily — and  especially 
the  discordant  ones  among  us — to  remember 
that  we  walk  on  the  earth,  which  is  bestrewn 
with   rocks  that   shall    bruise  our  feet,   and 

269 


THE  DISCORDANT  CHILDREN 

pitfalls  that  shall  make  us  stumble;  that  the 
toils  of  nature  and  the  earning  of  bread  are 
wholesome  for  us,  and  must  go  on  forever; 
and  that  the  truest  joy  as  well  as  the  most 
wholesome  lives  are  realized  to  us  as  we 
find  pleasure  in  work,  and  have  contentment 
in  small  gains  and  moderate  successes. 


270 


PRINTED  BY  R.  R.  DONNELLEY 
AND  SONS  COMPANY,  AT  THE 
LAKESIDE  PRESS,  CHICAGO,  ILL. 


^^^^      y^ 


!*  M 


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